Ex Machina
by Metrophor
Summary: *NO LONGER UPDATED* After a mysterious ship crash-lands on the outskirts of the new Earth settlement, WALL-E, EVE, and the people of the Axiom are faced with a sinister plot nearly seven hundred years in the making.
1. Chapter 1

Yes, I'm writing Wall-E fanfiction, good lord.  
Anyway, before we begin, a few disclaimers: while this story does indeed take place in the Wall-E universe, keep in mind that a lot of it will be set about 700 years pre-movie, during the time of Earth's mass exodus. So, yeah... not strictly canon, I suppose, since a lot of what happened back then is speculation on my part. :3  
Also I'm... er, kind of out of practice with the whole fanfiction-writing business (FANFICTION IS SRS BIZNESS GUYS); here's to hoping it won't suck TOO much. Mwaha.

Wall-E is © Pixar  
Owner of the Mysterious Hand (oh, you'll see, just read on) is © Metrophor (yours truly)

--

Ex Machina

Chapter: 01

--

_These are the last things he remembers:_

_  
Shock, as he realized that the incessantly blinking light on the control panel meant that the ship was actually being hailed-_

_  
A dun-colored wasteland looming in front of the viewscreen, orbited by interstellar debris and the satellite remnants of an age far gone in the history of the human race-_

_  
The dawning realization that something had gone very wrong, as if the shrill alarms reverberating through the bridge weren't enough of a tip-off-_

_  
"CAPTAIN!" _

_These are the last things he remembers. _

_Fragments in the darkness._

_  
And then..._

--

If EVE hadn't already known what it was, she never would have assessed that the hulking thing she was currently looking at was a ship.

She'd heard it coming before she had seen it, the spacecraft's screaming descent passing so low overhead -and at such a high velocity- that it had knocked every one of the new colonists off of their collective feet, like dominoes. That could probably have been attributed, however, to the fact that after having spent a lifetime in a recumbent position, none of them -not even the Captain- were very steady on their pins.

But if the force of the vessel's passing was an illusion, the impact -as it had driven into the ground at the edge of the wasteland that bordered the city's skeletal remnants- most certainly was _not_. In fact, it had made the ground ripple in a manner that seemed better attuned to water, actually rocking the Axiom off of one of its landing apparatuses for a moment.

That had been... festive.

At the moment, Earth's newest visitor was lying at the end of a deep trench, several hundred feet long, littered with bits of debris that could only be part of the shipуs body that had been torn off during its skidding and none-too-graceful landing. Thick, oily black smoke poured skyward, mingling with clouds of settling dust and grit, and the bulk of the crashed vessel glowed a deep, sullen red in places.

EVE's directive did not include a working knowledge of mechanics, beyond what she needed to repair herself (and which had come in very, very handy in WALL-E's case). But even she could draw the conclusion that it was nothing less than a miracle that the starship was still intact after hitting the ground that hard.

Well. _Mostly_ intact; it would probably never get off the ground again. Not that whoever had been piloting the thing would want to try, what with that gaping hole torn in the side.

"_OOOO_oooooh..."

The electronic voice came from behind her, accompanied by the grinding of treads. It was WALL-E, of course, his little metallic hands tapping against one another in trepidation as he peered at the wreckage, then over at EVE, and back again. There was definitely a hint of the 'wow-will-you-look-at-that' in the drawn-out, normally monosyllabic response. His hand closed around the nearer of EVE's fins, interlocking his makeshift fingers with hers.

In spite of the distraction the scene in front of her provided, the action elicited a high-pitched giggle that would have seemed downright girlish if EVE had not been a machine. For some reason, the outdated, mud-spattered robot always had that effect. It was... perplexing. Something her neural processors couldn't pinpoint the reason for.

Maybe the idle observation of the female human -Mary- was the best way to describe it, although EVE still didn't quite know what she'd meant when she had said the probe looked 'happy'.

So yes, WALL-E made EVE 'happy', even if she didn't know what 'happy' was beyond that it was something she liked.

"Eee-vah!" WALL-E pointed with his free hand at the wreckage, apparently excited... if the jigging up and down was any indication, either from the fact that it was something unexpected or the prospect of scavenging new 'treasures' out of what was left.

Personally, EVE hoped it was the former, but even she couldn't be sure.

"Eee-vah! Look!"

"Ship," she agreed, following his gaze. She started to drift toward it, only stopping when the tug on her fin made her realize that her companion still hadn't let go of her hand. She rotated her head to look back at him. If a robot with no facial features other than a pair of eyes could look mischievous, then EVE was positively oozing it. "Investigate?"

They should have technically waited for instructions on what to do next, possibly from Captain McCrea, the _de facto_ leader of Earth's new colonists. But if McCrea was the leader of the humans, then WALL-E and EVE were setting an example for the machine half of the colonists' numbers (actually it was more than half, but most of them were so small or unobtrusive that it didn't particularly seem like it). And it was a leader's duty (EVE told herself) to make certain that a potentially dangerous area was secure before allowing others to put themselves at risk.

The _real_ reason was that WALL-E's curiosity was infectious: she was as eager to see what was inside the ship as he was. Indeed, the suggestion to 'investigate' was barely out in the open before he was off, towing EVE along after him like some odd, luminous balloon.  
Behind them, the humans and even several robots were creeping up to the hillside the duo had just vacated, not even noticing as two solitary machines vanished into the smoke.

Due to the fact that the starship was lying on its side, at a severe angle, EVE had to actually carry WALL-E with her in order to get inside, as the machineуs treads weren't meant for such a steep ascent. It was a lucky thing that the bulk of the ship had cooled sufficiently by the time the duo had gotten close enough to attempt an entry; it was bad enough that the climb was at such a severe angle without being hot on top of the bargain. It was true that both EVE and WALL-E were built to be fire-retardant, but if molten or semimolten metal had gotten on either of them, it might have caused some minor damage.

Not to mention, it would have been a real hassle to get it off again.

This ship was smaller than the Axiom, although still huge by conventional standards, and from what undamaged parts sheуd been able to look over, while more aerodynamic it also wasn't as sturdy... which probably was one of the reasons it had gotten so battered on its way in.

That was a guess on EVE's part, of course; it would take much more scrutiny to determine what exactly had gone wrong. Preferably from robots actually meant to process such information. In her opinion, the best thing to do would be to try and find the Captain... or at least, someone or something that could tell them what had happened or at least what to do next.

Here, however, it seemed her luck had run out: the bridge itself was deserted. The vessel had landed (if you could call it that) nose first, with enough force to hurl a lot of the more delicately-moored equipment clear to the back. And, as WALL-E set about picking through jumbles of software and twisted metal parts (and EVE scanned the surrounding area for signs of life), his female counterpart came to realize that for whatever reason, here was no sign of... well, _anyone_ in the room other than themselves.

A moment's further scrutiny, however, revealed that her conclusion wasn't entirely accurate. The Autopilot was hanging from the ceiling in the center of the bridge, just as one did in the _Axiom_ (not that she enjoyed thinking about it). The difference was, there was a definite slump to this one, its delicate black-and-white paint job liberally streaked with scorch marks.

Furthermore, and perhaps most noticeably -after she'd flown up to have a closer look-, the machineуs single 'eye' was dark, and sported an ugly, spiderwebbed crack right through its center. Something must have struck it with considerable force before it could retract into the ceiling; possibly a part of the metallic snarl that littered the floor.

WALL-E, for his part, was cheerfully turning over odds and ends tat heуd managed to tug loose: assorted lengths of wire (of various colors); a piece of glass that had melted into a rough approximation of a heart-shape; a red-tinted lens of some kind attached to a broken length of chain.

Something else had caught his eye when heуd reached to retrieve the latter, wedged underneath a large metal panel that had been thrown right up against the wall: something light-colored and which looked as though it had a soft texture.

He stretched his neck out, tilting his head to peer into the shadowy recesses underneath the panel, peering hard in an effort to make it out.

"Eee-vah!"

EVE jumped at the sound of her name; no mean feat considering she was floating in midair. "WALL-E?"

She rotated around to find him pointing excitedly at something underneath a warped section of metal. Curious, she floated over, the gun in her arm -as always- at the ready in case whatever he was looking at decided to surprise her. EVE, needless to say, didn't like being surprised.

Not. At. All.

That, of course, was when the panel decided to shift. _Loudly_.

Instantly the business end of her weapon was leveled at the metal plate- not quite preparing to fire at it, but if something decided to... say, _jump out at her_, she would be in the perfect position to vaporize it for its audacity.

Thankfully, nothing did decide to jump out. Instead, the panel shifted again, then abruptly fell to one side with an earsplitting clang.

It had fallen over because it had been pushed from behind, by the object that had attracted WALL-E's interest. Namely, a hand.

A _human_ hand.

It seemed the bridge was not as deserted as the two robots had thought, after all.

--

AN: There, you see? Did I, or did I not tell you there would be a mysterious hand?

You'll find out who it belongs to (along with... other things... heh heh) in the next chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

Hello ladies and gents, it's Metrophor. :3

Wow, I barely got this sucker up and already I'm getting reviews? Now that's flattering.

I fixed up the problems in Chapter 1; that'll teach me to save in RTF. Thanks, reviewers, for letting me know- I appreciate it.

Anyway. Where was I?

Oh yes.

Welcome to chapter two, wherein you are introduced to the rest of Mysterious Hand's owner. 3

Wall-E is, as always, © Pixar.  
Vox, on the other hand, is © Metrophor (me. )

I'd be honored if someone sued me over this, but please- really. Don't.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter: 02

"_Are you getting all of this? I can't believe it! We can actually go home!"_

"_**But Captain, Directive A113**__-"_

"_-doesn't seem to be relevant any more."_

"_**Captain, if you would just**__-"_

"_You patched the transmission through!"_

"_**Regardless, I cannot**__** allow**__-"_

"_Ah, ah, ah, ah. Do you hear that, AUTO? Do you hear that? That is the sound of me not caring. If you'll excuse me-"_

--

He woke to a world of silence and of perfect white. No sounds reached his ears save for the faint, protracted humming of electrical equipment; the air was cool and still and somehow dank... he might have added, _like a wine cellar_, if he had ever actually been in a wine cellar before.

Which he hadn't.

He wondered for a moment if this was what being dead was like: an all-suffusing whiteness, the feeling of detachment from one's body, surrounded by a corona of brilliant light.

Of course, in the next instant, his logical mind reawakened and he realized that what he was staring at was the ceiling of some kind of medical bay. And there was an overhead lamp shining smack into his face.

Wait. His _face_. So he wasn't dead then.

Yes... That made sense. Or at least, he thought it did. It was... difficult to think. Everything seemed as if it had gone into soft focus in his head, clear thought slipping through the fingers of his mind.

That meant that the smooth surface he was lying on must have been some type of stretcher or operating table, then. But he still could not comprehend where he _was_, or moreover how he had gotten here in the first place. Wasn't he supposed to be on the bridge-?

WALL-E drew back his head sharply when the man on the medical table moved. The recycling unit had just been working up his courage to reach out and touch the stranger's shoulder, in spite of the fact that EVE -who was floating placidly on the other side of the table- was giving him a look that suggested if he tried it he would be pulling back a smacked hand. She loved him, yes, and his curiosity had probably saved this gentleman's life, but it could be exasperating in its tenacity at times. Not that she was complaining, precisely... she just found herself wishing he came with an 'off' button every once in a while.

The object of their combined scrutiny moved a little again, eyes shifting behind lids that had been open just a crack before, and which had just as hastily shut, probably in reaction to the difference in lighting. His lips moved as well, just a bit, mouthing words too slurred and subaudible for even EVE's sharp hearing to pick out, except for one single phrase.

"...status report..."

EVE floated a little closer, curious, her head rocking to one side in an effort to hear better. Her efforts, however, turned out to be in vain, because in the next instant-

_Gzrrrnk... kthunk kthunk._

The stranger flinched involuntarily. What was _that_? It sounded distinctly metallic, the whirring of hydraulics suggesting a machine of some kind. Which wouldn't have been distracting, considering how largely robotics factored into daily life, but that sound had come from a position about three inches away from his left ear.

_What-?_

The man's head rolled sluggishly in WALL-E's direction, at the exact same moment the 'bot happened to look down, so that for a moment their foreheads were nearly touching. Whereas a few seconds ago he had been lying so perfectly still that he might have been a mannequin, now his eyes were wide open and if not precisely alert, then at least displaying a sharpness that was unnerving in its focused scrutiny.

"Oh, hey! You're awake!"

The stranger's eyes snapped off of WALL-E, the excited revelation coming just when the silent staring match had stretched on long enough to become actually uncomfortable. The former's eyes panned back and forth a moment, unsure as to where this newest addition to the room was until he stood (ponderously) up.

While it was obvious that the individual lying on the medical table was part of the crew staffing the ship that had crashed (the fact that they'd hauled him out of the wreck was proof of that, to say nothing of his attire), Captain McCrea had -frankly- never seen anyone, or anything, like him except in video clips presented by the _Axiom_'s computer.

To McCrea, he looked so thin as to be emaciated, his black-and-white uniform -which was a rough approximation of the Captain's own- loose rather than form-fitting; at least where it wasn't in shreds or blackened from soot. It was an aspect enhanced by the fact that had this other captain been standing upright, he would have been about as tall as his fleshier counterpart. But his lack of bodily tissue and his attire weren't what had piqued McCrea's interest (and, all right, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when the stranger had looked at him).

No, _that _distinction went to the fact that the strange captain's skin and hair had no more color to them than the room he was in. The man's skin was powdery-white, reminding McCrea of the plants two of the civilians had found the other day: ones that had been trying to grow underneath some fallen debris. They had been waxy pale, and starved-looking, too long deprived of the sunlight they so craved.

His hair was lighter still; when WALL-E, EVE and volunteering robots and humans had pulled him out the stuff had stood out around his head in uneven, feathery spikes, suggesting that prior to the crash he'd been in the habit of smoothing it back by some exterior means.

At first glance, when the stranger had shifted his head with the intent of pinpointing Captain McCrea, the latter had thought his eyes were black. Now, with the help of the overhead lighting and the angle at which the two were positioned, the Captain could tell that they weren't.

They were _red_.

However, before the combined effect could change from merely 'surprising' to something menacing, the survivor shut his eyes again and let his head drop back the half-inch it needed to go to connect with the table again.

He really wasn't so scary, McCrea thought; just kind of _weird_. He wondered why the newcomer's skin was like that... maybe he'd ask the computer later. She would know, he was certain; the ship's computer knew pretty much everything (or at least, everything her Captain could think of to ask). Boldness reasserting himself, the heavyset man moved over next to EVE, three pairs of eyes -two mechanical, one organic- peering down at their acquisition. Probably all the other passengers and machines were crowded around outside; a lot of them had heard the excitement and/or seen the rescue party returning.

"Hey... are you okay? Can you hear me?"

A silly question, but one that he felt needed asking. They hadn't seen anything outwardly wrong with the new Captain (and that was probably the most bizarre thing of all; that he didn't appear to be hurt), and he'd been breathing steadily from the time of his discovery, but the curiosity was eating at all three of the others in the room and for him to lose consciousness again... well, it was a good thing to be patient, but that virtue could only be stretched so far. It was all Captain McCrea could to to refrain from pelting the newcomer with questions then and there.

He reached out to give the pallid gentleman's shoulder a light shake, but stopped when, unexpectedly, McCrea got an answer to his question.

"Yes."

The stranger's voice was disproportionately deep: it rode just on the edge of becoming a baritone. It was also even more unexpectedly rough; almost grating. He sounded, frankly, like someone who had made a habit out of gargling with sandpaper.

His eyes were open again, but only to half-mast, their alarming coloration muted due to the shadows cast by his eyelashes. Slowly, the evacuee levered himself up on his forearms, taking in WALL-E (who seemed about ready to clamber up onto the table with him), EVE (who looked ready to haul WALL-E off if he tried it), and Captain McCrea by turns. He slumped to one side, right hand pressing briefly over his face.

As the stranger didn't seem willing to volunteer any further conversation, McCrea took the initiative again.

"That was quite a crash," he remarked, unnecessarily, a note of almost childish awe creeping into his voice.

The other human paused, glancing up over the edge of his fingers. His voice, when he spoke again, seemed faded and somehow disjointed, as if his attention wasn't all on the conversation.

"Crash...?" His gaze sharpened abruptly, and he seemed to study his surroundings much more closely. "...Where...?"

"Oh!" Well of course he would be confused. The white-haired Captain had been unconscious when they'd dragged him out of his ship; no doubt he would be terribly perplexed upon waking up in a new environment with a lot of unfamiliar people (well, sort of) standing around him. McCrea would have been. "Sorry." Fixing his audience with a wide and cheerfully welcoming grin, he waved an arm at the room, and -presumably- the area beyond with the beaming pride of someone who was displaying the cure for cancer. "You're on board the _Axiom_- on Earth!" The last two words were spoken with a profound air of the 'yeah-I-can-hardly-believe-it-either'. "We pulled you out of your ship after it... um... crashed," he added a moment later, sounding slightly more subdued.

"'We'?"

The disbelief in that single word was almost palpable. Personally, Captain McCrea thought 'on Earth' should have warranted that kind of reaction more than the knowledge that there were other people present, but...

...Well, he'd never received any transmissions from other ships during his time as acting Captain, either. If the computer hadn't kept him up to date on his history (as much of it as, in hindsight, AUTO probably thought was safe to tell him) he probably wouldn't even have imagined there _were _other ships. Maybe this guy had a right to be shocked.

A tugging on his shirt sleeve made the pallid Captain look over to one side, where WALL-E was leaning expectantly toward him. Even without many human characteristics, he managed to project an air of 'earnestness' toward his discovery. Having gotten said discovery's attention, one old metallic hand extended out and up, fingers spread open in what was unmistakably an offer for a handshake.

He'd obviously been brushing up on, quite literally, his 'people skills'.

"Wa-AAAH-lieeee," he squeaked, electronic voice rising several octaves on the second syllable of his name.

The introduction got a few moments' dumbfounded silence (though he did grasp the proffered hand with his own), which might have dragged on indefinitely had EVE, with a very non-robotic sigh, not decided to back the endearing little recycler up. Floating around the prone body of the man on the table, she bobbed up and down next to WALL-E and imitated him, careful _not _to offer her gun hand.

"Eeeeeee-ve," she reinforced, with a cheerful upturn of blue LED eyes. Slowly, the stranger's eyes shifted to her, and then to where Captain McCrea was still standing, more or less hovering on the far side of the table.

"Hi!" he said, still as cheerfully as he could muster (which wasn't hard, this _was _the only human not of the _Axiom _he'd ever seen). "I'm Brian McCrea, Captain of the _Axiom_. Welcome aboard!"

EVE, apparently thinking that someone as nonresponsive as the current subject of scrutiny could do with a little prodding, restructured her extended hand into a point. One of inquiry.

"You?" she asked, stretching her limited vocabulary as best she could. "Name?"

Having studied the various types of Earth flora and fauna in preparation for her main directive, she found she could liken his current facial expression to that of a goldfish. After a moment, however (she could practically see the light blink on over his head), comprehension dawned in his eyes and he relaxed, reverting back to the vaguely bemused attitude he'd been assuming up until that point.

"Vox." Again, he pressed a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose in between thumb and forefinger in an attempt to concentrate. "...Captain Vescuya..."

The latter comment was spoken in a near-undertone, more to himself than to his miniature audience; very close to the idea of 'thinking out loud'.

"Fff-aaaaaaw-ks?"

That, of course, was WALL-E, who naturally struggled to process the unfamiliar sound as he guided the man's hand up and down in a jerky approximation of the shake he'd initiated.

"_Captain_," EVE corrected him, sounding as close to smug as any human could. She was, of course, pleased with himself- she and WALL-E had _rescued _someone. Rescued someone _important_.

Oddly, Vox looked almost... uncomfortable at the correction, though he said nothing to dispute it.

_Vox Vescuya?_ Captain McCrea thought in bewilderment. _What kind of a name is that?_

Pursuit of that line of inquiry, however, was going to have to wait, for it was at that moment that this 'Captain Vescuya' sat bolt upright, so abruptly that it seemed he must surely have catapulted himself into midair had the action been any more forceful.

_Ah, now it's coming back to him. _

"The ship! The cargo. I." His white-skinned hands gripped the edge of the table, ponderously... stiffly... painfully swinging first one leg and then the other over it. "I must go back. I must make sure it is undamaged."

All the languidness had gone out of his bizarre, scratchy voice, replaced by a tension so acute it bordered on downright alarm. A tension that was undermined by the fact that the instant his feet touched the floor and he attempted to stand, Vox immediately lost his balance and would have fallen flat onto his face- had EVE not quickly ducked under him and, grabbing the side if his coat, buoyed him up (an action prompting him to lean against the table again).

"Cargo?" McCrea's ears had -figuratively speaking- perked up at the mention of what the wrecked spacecraft had been carrying. He hadn't let EVE or any of the other robots search it (though a lot of them had certainly wanted to, barring perhaps M-O, who was overwhelmed by frustration at the prospect of cleaning something so monumental), telling them to wait until they at least had permission. "Oh, right! Um... there's a pretty big hole in the side, but I think it just damaged some auxiliary functions."

Captain Vescuya's head snapped around to look at McCrea as he brought up the subject, with a speed that seemed totally out of keeping with his otherwise frail appearance. It was almost unsettling to have _that much _of someone's attention, but at the same time, it was kind of... flattering. "What were you carrying? Maybe we can help check in on it."

Instantly, the pallid newcomer's face shut down. Literally. It became so totally expressionless that Captain McCrea almost took a step back. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you that."

"Oh come on!" He hadn't accepted that excuse from AUTO; he _sure _wasn't going to accept it from another Captain. "You must have come here for a reason! We're all here together, right?"

"You don't understand." Vox at least had the grace to appear guilty; these _were_, admittedly, the people that had come to his rescue after all. "I would like to tell you. But I have been forbidden to do so."

"Really." Captain McCrea folded his arms, in a manner that said in no uncertain terms that no one was leaving this room until he got answers. "Who told you you couldn't talk about it?"

The answer, when it came, was rewarded by a complete, stunned silence.

"Shelby Forthright."

--

AN: Thus, chapter two concludes, and hopefully creates more questions than it does answers. :3

For those of you that are wondering- Yes, Vox is indeed an albino. I'm aware that albino humans usually have blue eyes, but he's DIFFERENT, dangit.

And no, it's not just chance that his name is so unusual, though I do like odd names.

You'll just have to wait until next time to find out more...

MAYBE.

OH HO HO I are eeevil, non?


	3. Chapter 3

Hello, my no-doubt-mostly-imaginary readers, Metro here.

I'm considering breaking these chapters up in the future so they aren't so scary long; what do you think? I'll try it with this update, and see how it goes from there.

A couple notes before I begin: No, Vox isn't a cyborg. x3 There's another reason for the difference in body mass; it will become clear in later chapters (sooooon).

I also seem to have neglected to mention his age- think 'early to mid-thirties'.

Without further ado: on with the show!

Wall-E is © Pixar.

Vox is © me.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter: 03

--

"Shelby Forthright?" Captain McCrea repeated, perplexed. It wasn't the first time the former Buy 'n' Large CEO had done something incomprehensible... at least in a roundabout sort of way, since the man had, by all accounts, been dead for a very long time. "I don't get it. Why would he do something like that?" More to the point, how could a dead man 'tell' anyone anything?

The man he was currently addressing, however, seemed like a dubious source of information at best- if only because 'information' was the last thing he apparently wanted to give out. Still, at least being on his feet had made the newly-conscious Captain somewhat more vocal. He hesitated for a few heartbeats, glanced up at the ceiling for a moment with the air of one undergoing a heated internal debate, and then looked back down with an expression of resignation.

"It's... complicated," he began, unhelpfully. When there was no immediate answer, and both the robots -who were listening interestedly in on the conversation, WALL-E particularly- and Captain McCrea made no sign of letting the subject drop, he paused, and then allowed himself a faint sigh that contained an almost palpable feeling of surrender. "I have neglected to thank you for rescuing me. I am sorry." Obviously, there was an aspect of guilt involved in withholding information from people that had thus far displayed no hostility toward him whatsoever.

"Suffice it to say that the... product... on board the ship is quite fragile, and requires constant monitoring. I must return to ensure that it hasn't sustained irreparable damage."

He pushed away from the table with the clear intent of heading for the door, which was blocked by McCrea's formidable bulk. The _Axiom_'s captain looked steadily at the pale human for a moment- then rubbed the back of his head awkwardly with a hand and stepped back. He really didn't like being confrontational; it simply wasn't in Brian's nature. Oh, he could be assertive when he wanted to be (and he wasn't against, as the archaic saying went, 'putting his money where his mouth was'), but this was different than staring down a rebellious AI.

"Okay," he acquiesced, "if it's really that important to you." Captain Vescuya visibly relaxed, and while he didn't actually smile, he did incline his head in a protracted gesture of gratitude. He took a step toward the door-

"But take WALL-E and EVE along."

Vox froze in mid-stride, his behavior a marked contrast between that of the two machines behind him. WALL-E hadn't really been paying attention to the conversation (EVE was much more interesting, for starters); all he knew was that he'd just gotten invited, in a way, to go on a trip. He liked going on trips. There were so many opportunities to explore, to poke his head into new things, find special treasures to add to his collection... there was still his directive to attend to of course, but with recent developments it seemed to have been put on temporary hold.

Best of all, he got to go with EVE.

WALL-E scooted over the polished floor in between Captains McCrea and Vescuya, looking up at them and tapping his hands together in a manner that seemed to imitate applause. "Yay," he squeaked- drawing the vowel out for almost five full seconds.

EVE, naturally, would have gone wherever it was WALL-E was going anyway, even if she hadn't been told to. He needed someone to keep an eye on him, she thought, as close to 'primply' as her analytical mind could get. And always, there was the underlying factor of wanting to be close to the silly little 'bot. He had done so much to take care of her that it was the least she could do to return the favor. The revelation of watching her own security footage playing back from when she had been dormant had, figuratively speaking, well and truly melted her robotic heart.

Besides, she was curious, too. Not as much as WALL-E, perhaps, but it was a new ship. 'New' was equivalent to 'learning', and EVE _loved_ to learn new things. That it was almost certainly programmed into her didn't even warrant a moment's thought.

"...Very well." That was the new Captain, sounding oddly defeated. He obviously thought that if he didn't compromise he'd never get anything done. He didn't seem to have much of a choice in the matter.

Apparently, all thoughts of making certain he really wasn't hurt -or at least subjecting him to a quick scan for internal injuries- had been forgotten. Since he wasn't falling over, bleeding, or in obvious pain, perhaps it could wait until later.

"Great!" Tension dissolved, at least for the moment, Captain McCrea reverted back to his usual, friendlier disposition. "I'll show you out- and when you get back we can give you a tour of the new settlement! We found a bunch of these things called 'books' in the hold, and the computer's been showing us how to do something called 'cultivation'..."

--

Captain McCrea watched the trio of Vox and his machine escorts descending down toward the wreckage (which had thankfully stopped smoldering by that time) from the entrance to the _Axiom_, waving to them as they went, though they couldn't actually see him from their position. Their passing had been heralded by a rather considerable crowd, as this scrawny, powder-white stranger was in essence the entertainment of the day (so to speak); thankfully, they'd kept a respectful distance. He waited until the three had faded into the distance, then turned and reentered his ship.

Obviously, Vox wasn't going to volunteer many answers that would satisfy the Captain... or, for that matter, the colonists, who no doubt would be curious as to who this stranger was and whether any more ships were forthcoming.

McCrea knew the pale man wasn't the person to go to for information.

Thankfully, he knew someone who was.

--

AN: So yes. Shorter chapter, for your convenience; next one will be up momentarily.

In which the Captain will be paying a visit to someone who may be able to shed some light on the whole situation...

I'm not going to tell you who it is of course; you probably can see it coming a mile off.


	4. Chapter 4

Ex Machina

Chapter 4

--

The _Axiom_ had been on Earth for about three months, give or take a few days, though AUTO had only been online for about two weeks of that time. At first, when the AI had realized that the ship was in fact sitting in the exact last place he wanted it to be, he had attempted to immediately take off again... an action that, fortunately, hadn't worked. Until he could be certain that AUTO wouldn't be attempting to wrest control of the ship, Captain McCrea had temporarily deactivated a few of AUTO's functions... namely, those that oversaw the actual _piloting_. The AI still could operate many of the vessel's programs, he just couldn't make it _move_.

Initially, when that reality sunk in, AUTO had been as close to panic as the Captain had ever seen him go. Frankly, he hadn't thought AUTO could even _do_ 'panic'. It had, however, only lasted a few minutes, as the machine's processor speed was measured in femtoseconds and it didn't take long for him to get a handle on the situation. What it boiled down to was this: as long as people were actually _on_ the _Axiom_, he might have been able to rectify what he viewed as a catastrophe. However, most of the ship's pasengers had migrated to the city, attempting to salvage some of the old buildings for habitation, while others had a 'come and go as you please' attitude and could not be detained for very long.

He could access the ship's loudspeakers and demand that people return to the ship (actually, that was _exactly_ what he had done at the beginning), but, not having a particularly mobile body, going out and actually hauling the colonists back was out of the question.

So AUTO found himself facing a new directive: that of advisor. Credit where credit was due, once the AI had discovered that the ship wasn't going anywhere, he had settled down and reverted to his old personality of unshakable calm. Captain McCrea came to the bridge often to ask him questions- usually banal things, but occasionally requesting something that only AUTO could do, such as sending out transmissions containing an update on Directive A113 (revoked) to all remaining ships in deep space.

He had actually been hibernating when the new ship had crashed, though the impact had immediately brought his system back online. He had been monitoring the situation from the bridge ever since, mostly focusing on the vessel itself rather than what people pulled out of it.

He had been expecting the Captain's presence, and so was not surprised in the slightest when Captain McCrea actually did step onto the deck.

"Hi, AUTO," he began, tentatively, when the AI rotated around to look at him.

"**Good afternoon, Captain.**"

As always, there was no inflection in the Axiom Autopilot's voice; no indication that he found conversation as awkward as the Captain did after what had occurred between them. It wasn't as difficult as it had been initially (and, all right, seeing AUTO go through a panic attack had done a lot to heal the gap), but there was always that underlying, faint note of tension. The AI had not apologized for his mutinous actions of course; from AUTO's standpoint there was no reason to. He had only been trying to protect the humans on board his ship. There was nothing wrong with that.

... All right, so he was a _little_ guilty -as much as AUTO could be 'guilty- about going against his Captain's orders, but there was still nothing wrong with that.

"So, um, AUTO... do you know anything about that ship?" McCrea had moved to stand over by one of the huge windows near the control panel, and was looking out over the wasteland at the crupled wreck on the city limits.

"**Yes, Captain.**"

To be perfectly honest, Captain McCrea had been expecting nothing more than a 'no' or an invitation to look into the matter. Thus, the affirmative response made him look up with a start, his eyes going big with dawning enthusiasm. "Really?"

"**Yes, Captain.**"

"And-?" McCrea prompted, looking back to see that AUTO had moved to position himself over the Captain's shoulder.

"**Vessel is positively identified as designated M-Class starship **_**Absconditus**_**.**"

Captain McCrea blinked, confused. "'M-class'? What does that mean?"

"**M-Class starships are fully-automated vessels meant to be manned by one human Captain, usually for cargo or storage purposes**_**.**_"

"Well, okay... but what's the _Absconditus_? I mean, what's it supposed to do?"

"**No futher information available**."

McCrea frowned. "C'mon, AUTO, you knew what the ships name was so you must know what its purpose is, right?"

"**Negative, Captain.**"

This was getting them nowhere. "Can you find out?" he asked, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. AUTO regarded him silently a moment, then slid over to one of the panels to the Captain's right.

"**Attempting further inquiry.**" Panels slid open on the sides of AUTO's lower spokes, extending a set of rather delicate-looking wires. These inserted themselves into slots on the screen he was hanging over, and the AI's single eye brightened for a moment, data feeding directly into his neural network. The pose lasted for nearly a full minute, and then the wires retracted back into their original positions. "**Negative, Captain. Information involving the **_**Absconditus**_** is designated classified.**" He paused. "**Furthermore, the data has been encrypted to discourage hacking attempts.**"

Oh ho, now that was interesting. McCrea's eyebrows rose nearly to the level of his hairline. What could there possibly be inside that ship that someone didn't want other people to see? He couldn't think of anything himself, just offhand; particularly not something that would warrant a 'mum's the word' from Buy 'n' Large's old CEO.

"I guess we'll just have to wait until they get back..." he muttered to himself, rubbing his chin with a pudgy hand. AUTO looked up at him at that, the protective casing around his center lens contracting in a manner that McCrea had come to think of as 'interest'.

"**Captain?**"

"Oh- I sent EVE and WALL-E to go check it out with the guy we rescued... um... Captain Vescuya."

The red light in the center of AUTO's eye contracted slightly.

"**Repeat, please, Captain.**"

Captain McCrea looked slightly taken aback, but did as he was asked.

AUTO looked at him for a second, perhaps considering something.

"**No record of any Captain by that name exists in my database.**"

McCrea's jaw dropped slightly as the impact of those words reached him. "_What_?"

"**There is no mention of a Captain Vescuya on any of my records. Either their file has been deliberately erased, or the individual in question does not exist.**"

--

The man who did not exist, meanwhile, was currently hunched over what was left of the crashed ship's controls, attempting -to the best of his ability- to elicit any sort of response whatsoever. Although his face remained as flat and unevocative as ever, the slight downward turn of his snowy eyebrows suggested a mounting level of frustration. Nearly half an hour, and still nothing. Clearly, it would take some extensive repair work to get the system up and running again... if 'getting it running again' was even possible. He'd barely managed to send out the transmission pinpointing the _Absconditus_'s location before things had started to malfunction; he hoped that, at least, had happened the way it was supposed to.

A few minor functions still operated, but not many, and certainly not ones that would to the ship any sort of service as a whole. Not even the main computer was operable.

"Ca-HAAAP-tin!"

The tinny voice was accompanied by another light tug on the cuff of Vox's pants, eliciting a quick look down. It was WALL-E, of course, looking up at him with fathomless dark lens-eyes. He had only marginally better luck pronouncing the title as opposed to Vox's actual name. "Caaaah-p-tiiiin," he repeated, giving it another try, "Di-reck-tiiiive?"

He wanted to explore more of the ship, and they couldn't do it if they spent all their time on the bridge. It was what he would have liked to say, but his vocabulary, though improving each day, was still sadly limited by general comparison.

For once, EVE was in complete agreement: she could tell from a glance that no matter how much time Captain Vescuya spent poring over the shattered controls, he wasn't going to get a significant response out of them. Currently, she was investigating the decorations that had come loose from the walls during the crash, picking them over to see if there was anything in there that WALL-E might like. There wasn't much; in fact, practically nothing. A single painting, as opposed to the multitude on board the _Axiom_, and it was too badly damaged for her to make out what it was supposed to depict.

"...Indeed," Vox admitted, reluctantly, after a pause. He straightened up, glancing toward the doors leading away from the bridge. Though the ship was still at an angle, debris had piled away from that side of the room. There wasn't anything that would obstruct their passage. "Follow me." He headed toward the exit, pausing halfway to give the clearly dead Autopilot one long, scrutinizing look. He traced the crack through its eye with a finger, sighed, and continued on, followed eagerly by his two machine companions.

--

He had to brace his foot against the far wall and yank to get the door open, and even then it only did so when EVE lent a hand (although she looked as though she would have liked to simply blast it off its hinges).

Once through, the passageway to the _Absconditus_'s interior was clear, though dimly lit by flickering, incandescent light. It gave the slick, polished gray-white of the surrounding walls and ceiling an eerie blue cast, as if the three were journeying through a corridor of glacial ice. And in spite of its expansive nature, there really wasn't much to look at- other than the gaping hole in the side, through which a shrill wind was whistling as they passed it by. Descending deeper into the ship's interior, EVE's sensors registered an immediate and surprising drop in temperature, of perhaps ten degrees or more. There was some type of an auxiliary cooling system still operating below the top level, it seemed, the corridors descending on a gradual slope, taking a curving route deeper and deeper into the body of the vessel.

They reached the first of the doors after perhaps three and a half minutes had elapsed.

It was _huge_- crafted of some unidentifiable alloy nearly an inch thick, each panel towering easily ten, eleven feet in height. They rested flush against the corridor walls, opened by a touch of the Captain's hand against a wall-mounted panel, brushed metal surfaces painted with an intricate series of violently yellow, stylized, interlocking arcs.

Behind the door, there lay what appeared to be a circular balcony, bathed in much brighter yellow light. The air was warmer here too, if EVE's thermometer was to be believed, though Vox made no indication through body language that this was so. The chamber was perhaps twenty feet across in every direction, though neither she nor WALL-E could tell from their current position how deep it was.

"This," said Vox, breaking the eerie silence with a voice that seemed swallowed up in a way by the room they were in, "is the first storage bay."

--

AN: Thus do we conclude chapter 4 of this little adventure.

The next chapter marks the first of the interludes, which for all intents and purposes translates as 'flashbacks'- so you'll have to wait until the chapter after that to find out just what the ship is carrying that's so darned important. MWAHAHAHA.


	5. First Interlude

Hello! As always, it's Metro, back again with the first Interlude.

Expect to see these popping up rather frequently in the future; they'll mostly be fairly short so as not to interrupt the flow of the story too much.

Anyway, ladies and gents, are you ready for a...

TIME WARP?

Don't worry- it's just a jump to the left.

Wall-E is © Pixar.

Vox and the one-shot characters featured in this interlude are © Metrophor.

--

Ex Machina

First Interlude

--

"Cade! For chrissake, aren't the preparations for departure completed yet?!"

The abrupt question made Simon jump about a foot in the air, nearly dropping the checklist he'd been going over at the edge of the loading bay. Machines filed back and forth in a steady line to and from the _Absconditus_, loading boxes labeled such comforting things as 'fragile' and 'volatile compound- handle with care' stamped in bold black ink on their sides. A fair amount of humans loitered about the premises as well, though as the vessel would for the most part be manned entirely by robotic equipment they seemed to be far less alert than their non-organic counterparts. The speaker was Simon Cade's direct superior, who currently was headed straight for the mousy little research, striding over the tarmac with a grim, determined expression on his face.

It was how old Greg Harrison greeted the majority of his subordinates, on a virtually ritualistic basis. Their name, followed by the labeled crime of the day. So that would be "Jameson! You're hungover again!"; "Cartwright! Get your hair out of your face!"; "Ahvenainen! Get the hell away from the welding torches and fix that oil gauge like you were supposed to!".

He called it "affectionate realism". Certainly he felt an affinity for those operating under him, regardless of their personal quirks and shortcomings. Hell- it was because of their little idiosyncrasies that he grew so fond of them in the first place. People weren't meant to be perfect -that wasn't cynicism; it was _fact_ - but he was amiable enough about the matter unless it a truly ostentatious flaw was involved. And because he had to live with such shackling sentiments, it was only fair that the objects of such innermost affection were given absolutely no quarter when it came to expressing any dissatisfactions he might have.

Essentially, he was tough on them because he liked them. It was a screwed-up logic, he'd be the first to admit, but one that helped him get by the majority of his fifty years.

With a gradually expanding bald spot centered about the roots of thin gray hair, a firm brow, the project overseer sported cloudy blue eyes that were slightly crinkled about the edges, but still managed to come across as being sharp and intelligent.

"N... nearly, sir," Cade responded, with a salute that nearly caused him to fumble his notepad a second time. He was one of those quiet, studious types; fresh out of college and with a bright, shiny quality to his cheeks that made them achingly tempting to slap. His wire-rims sat crookedly on his nose, and he quickly straightened them as Harrison converged on the technician's peers like a black-suited crow dive bombing a flock of doves. "There's just a bit more equipment we need to connect; everything else is pretty much loaded and ready to go."

"Well _step up the pace_!" Harrison snapped, glancing up at the looming bulk of the chrome-and-jet-colored ship sitting quiescently in preparation for launch. "I've been on the phone all morning with HQ. Forthright's set to arrive in two hours, and if this whole setup isn't up to par it'll be _my_ head on the chopping block!"

Well, that would explain why the overseer looked so harassed. The Buy 'n' Large CEO did like to ensure that all of his corporations' ventures were performing properly; the man was, in fact, so much of a perfectionist that it bordered on the obsessive. And Caid didn't doubt that if something happened to not be to President Forthright's liking... well. He wouldn't have wanted to be in Harrison's shoes for all the proverbial tea in China.

Not that there was tea in China anymore.

Thankfully, his superior's attention had wandered away from browbeating the wiry tech, and toward the opened side of the _Absconditus_'s bay. More specifically, he was scrutinizing the cylindrical device currently being wired into place inside the bay, welding equipment spitting arcs of brilliantly-colored slag to fall like glowing rain from the workspace to the ground below. He shaded his eyes with a hand, squinting in such a way that it made his entire face scrunch up, though it could hardly have been due to the sun: the smog was thinner than usual today, but still thick enough that it made the sky seem as if it were in a perpetual state of overcast.

"So that's one of those cryogenic chambers, is it?" he asked gruffly, vocal tone pitched at a level that seemed highly dubious of the whole affair. Rightly so; the chamber itself was only just tall enough for a moderately-sized human to fit comfortably into. If anything, from this distance the enclosure seemed even more cramped.

"Yes, sir," Simon replied instant eager to discuss something that didn't involve the harrowing prospect of a visit from the CEO himself. He waved his free hand at the general direction of the object in illustration. "We've been testing the equipment for several months now, and the trial runs have been complete successes all the way down the line. There are still side effects of the thawing process, stiff joints and such, but those clear up after the subject's been conscious and had a chance to walk around for a bit. That one there" -he pointed at it with his pencil- "will be used to house the Captain. Since the _Absconditus_ is largely self-operating it isn't necessary for a pilot to be conscious the entire time. The mechanism is pre-programmed to activate thaws for scheduled patrols and maintenance; it's much more effective for the pilot in the long run. Besides which, we think it may help with a lot of the psychological effects of being alone on board."

Harrison nodded slowly, listening, though his eyes were still narrowed with suspicion. He was the sort of man that didn't trust technology farther than he could throw it, much preferring the work of real honest-to-goodness people. It was a philosophy that had become outdated nearly a century and a half ago, when the wave of advances in science and technology -particularly advanced robotics- had really taken off. But of all the personality quirks out there, Simon Cade could think of ones far worse for someone to have. "So our man will sit snugly inside there until it's time to run the diagnostics?" the older man inquired, scratching the back of his head. "Who's going to be flying this behemoth if the damn pilot's out of commission?"

"We've installed a standard AUTO unit on the bridge. It's been programmed with all the information and coding it needs to operate the ship's facilities. The cryogenic chambers run on external program, though- they'll go off without any attention from the AI, as there's a failsafe installed in case of emergencies."

Harrison considered the assurances of the technician a moment, then let out an exhalation that sounded suspiciously like a snort. "Well, good work, Cade," he admitted, grudgingly. "Just make sure you have the work completed before the deadline."

Cade nodded fervently. So fervently that his glasses nearly flew off, as a matter of fact. However, as Harrison started to turn aside, something occurred to Simon and he stepped forward, only just barely managing to stop himself from grabbing the overseer's sleeve. "Sir! We, er... we haven't gotten any information about the pilot. We need to program it into the computer so that the system can recognize their commands. You..." He blanched slightly as something occurred to him. "You did find someone capable of the position, didn't you?"

Unexpectedly, Harrison laughed, slapping the technician on the back so that Simon nearly pitched onto his face.

"Don't worry about a thing, kid," he said out of the corner of his mouth, lips curving up in a decidedly wolfish smile. Although 'sadistic' was not usually one of the overseer's traits, there was something distinctly predatory in that sly facial expression. "I've got just the man for the job."

--

AN: Next time- we actually find out what's IN the mysteeeeerious storage bay. Huzzah.


	6. Chapter 5

LOL guys you have no idea how hard it is not to rush the pacing of this story. NO. IDEA.

I guess it stems from an innate fear of people being bored by it. You can blame my English AP teacher for that, who drilled 'hook your audience' into us so hard it was practically stamped on the foreheads of her students.

(Also, right-o, I'll stick with the longer chapters. Personally, I kind of like them too.)

Fear not! Things are going to start getting very interesting (here read: 'strange'), very soon.

Read on, my friends. Read on.

Wall-E is © Pixar.

Vox is © me.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 5

--

Vox stepped out onto the smooth surface of the balcony, the soles of his shoes echoing weirdly in the still air. The acoustics of the alleged storage bay were roughly on par with that of a vaulted cathedral or auditorium, the sounds of his slow patrol echoing off of the walls. They appeared to have been crafted from some primitive form of holoscreen that had the color and texture of fogged glass, shadows rippling idly across the mist-white surfaces in patterns reminiscent of sunlight on water. He seemed barely substantial against that backdrop of white, some prior knowledge or uncanny intuition guiding the Captain to an unremarkable section of wall.

'Unremarkable', at least, until he set his fingers to the surface of the pane and pulled, a hidden control panel unfolding into his hands. It was little more than a glowing crescent of neon lights, flickering unsteadily in midair, the brilliant swaths of red, yellow and blue the only color either of his companions had come across in the ship that didn't follow a monochromatic theme.

"I must remain up here," he remarked to the two machines loitering behind him, not taking his eyes off of... whatever it was the albino was doing. "You two are free to explore the premises, so long as you remain within eyeshot." Obviously he figured that if they had come this far there was not much he could do to prevent further invasion of his ship, so he might as well go along with it. The set of his shoulders, however, indicated that Vox was not at all comfortable with the situation. It didn't take much to guess that he would have rather kept EVE and WALL-E outside of the room while he attended to his unknown business, but since he had already given them permission...

WALL-E had taken the initiative barely after said permission had been voiced, wheeling inquisitively over to the railing and peering down. There were ramps set at odd intervals around the circular chamber, as was a single handrail for -presumably- the human occupants of the ship to get in and out. They bordered a shaft that dropped perhaps fifteen feet straight down, lined with sectioned banks of glass-fronted shelves. Their contents were not obvious from the angle WALL-E was examining them from, particularly since the lights were positioned in such a way that the floor below was cast deeply into shadow.

EVE, however, did not view this as a problem, or if it was... it was a bit of a moot point when one was capable of flight.

"Whooooa!" Feeling his treads leave the comforting solidity of the ground, WALL-E's head and neck shot back down into the boxlike bulk of his chassis, then peeked one eye back up as the initial shock wore off and he realized that EVE was carrying him again. Her silvery laughter from somewhere above his head suggested that the probe was quite amused by his reaction, as she always was when something that she did or said took him by surprise. The rapid, uninterrupted clicking of fingers across a virtual keyboard behind them (EVE hadn't known human fingers _could _move that fast) indicated that Vox really _did _mean it when he said that they could explore- there hadn't even been a pause to suggest he'd glanced up at them.

Down into the shaft the two robots went, EVE concentrating on how far away they still had to go to reach the bottom, WALL-E fascinated by what it is the walls were displaying.

On one side, behind their protective glass barriers, hung rectangles of pasteboard twice his size, adorned with strange creatures whose wings, in sets of four each, resembled sections of brilliant stained glass. Across from them, a set of shelves supported ranks of meticulously labeled jars, each containing bottles housing ovoids in rainbow colors, from the very small to the surprisingly large, as well as containers of liquid that was clear, or clouded, or which glowed softly in the gloom.

But the _piece de resistance_ was what waited for them on the ground level. The minute EVE and WALL-E touched the ground, the latter zipped off in the hopes of getting a closer look at those creatures with the stained-glass wings. EVE, likewise, circled the room eagerly, peering into shelves, shining a light through some of the more dimly-registered areas, carefully recording everything that she came across for future reference.

Then they both stopped dead as lights flickered on from the walls above, shining illumination on what waited for their viewing pleasure behind the largest of the protective screens. WALL-E, who was closest to one such area, at first did not realize what he was seeing- at least until EVE shot forward from behind him, her blue eyes turned from their normal almond shape into perfect rounds of astonishment.

A wall of green beset them from all sides, stretching ten, twenty, thirty feet back into the walls of the loading bay. Arranged in wedges, some displayed a riot of color in the form of fantastically-shaped sprays, or clusters, or rose in twisting ranks along wall-mounted trellises. A hundred different shades of green, a thousand different shapes, all quietly waiting for the moment of discovery. And all of them were vibrantly alive.

"_Plants_!"

They must have been housed here in the bowels of the Absconditus for all of the seven hundred years it had been absent, growing determinedly in their chambers. Each wedge was carefully marked with a placard on the wall above its segment, the inside of the glass dotted with misty condensation from the automated irrigation system. _This_ was what the vessel had been designed to house? These plants were what Vox had been so anxious to check in on? They didn't look particularly fragile to EVE, and certainly none the worse for wear after such a bumpy landing. Were all living things so delicate, she wondered? The plant WALL-E had found had even survived being momentarily exposed to absolute zero. But she knew, from her own directive most of all, how precious these little green growing things were to humankind. Maybe Vox had a right to be overprotective of them.

WALL-E was no less thrilled by the discovery, albeit for a slightly different reason: mostly, he just liked unusual things, and _these _unusual things were all sorts of unusual colors and shapes. His hands and face were plastered up against the glass that shielded a brilliant crop of '_Tropaeolum majus_' -what humans called 'nasturtiums'-, their bright yellow-and-orange petals setting them distinctly apart from the nonflowering vegetation that bordered the flowers on either side.

"Oooooh... wow."

Normally he would have cut through the glass with his laser to get at them, but the fact that EVE was hovering next to him, and a slight hesitation to damage something that obviously wasn't trash, stopped him from acting on the impulse. Er, at the moment, at any rate... something told EVE that if she were to turn away for a moment, she might turn back to discover a large hole in the wall.

That was when she registered that her aural sensors were picking up a change in background noise, although she had to wrench her attention away from the plants to realize that she could no longer hear the sounds of typing.

The probe glanced up -WALL-E was still looking rapturously in at the vegetation samples- and discovered that Captain Vescuya was leaning against the railing almost directly overhead, at the top of the shaft, looking down at the two robots with the side of his jaw propped against the pad of one hand. The backlighting of the overhead lamps turned him into a half-silhouette, the angle of his head causing his eyes -which were cast mostly into shadow- to display the illusion of some faint internal glow. The reflective sheen of his pupils registered as points of crimson light, gone subtly violet thanks to the faintly blue cast of EVE's vision.

His face was still unreadable, and that was, to EVE, more disconcerting than his unusual coloration. She was used to human faces being elastic and extremely expressive; indeed she'd made something of a hobby out of watching them talk. She would try to guess where the conversation was going by the minor shifts in facial expression. Vox was far more serious than most of the humans she'd encountered, too. He didn't look like someone who smiled a lot.

But- wait. One edge of his mouth was twitching slightly, quirking upwards as if he were trying to smile -or perhaps smirk- but either had forgotten how or didn't quite have the knack of it.

"Directive?" she asked him.

"Damage to the storage bays is minimal," he replied. "We may return to the _Axiom _when you are ready."

EVE couldn't _wait _to see the look on the Captain's face when she brought him the news.

_Bzzzzt_...

EVE whipped around, exasperated, as her companion sheepishly shuffled his treads to one side of a thin line of melted glass.

"WALL-E!"

--

"So _this _is what you were so worried about!"

Captain McCrea rubbed the broad, fuzzy leaf of a waist-high gnarled vine between his thumb and forefinger, surrounded by the rest of the colonists and -in fact- a great deal of the Axiom's robots, namely those who had apparently affiliated themselves with EVE and WALL-E. M-O was conspicuously absent, however, temporarily overcome with the prospects of a world made entirely out of dirt. He really was going to have his programming modified before the poor little cleaning android self-destructed out of sheer frustration. WALL-E was sitting cheerily across from McCrea, holding up a planter box containing some of the recycler's favorites- chosen either for coloration or for unusual shape. EVE was picking over the other samples, currently peering into the deep reservoirs that gave the pitcher plant its name.

Vox crouched off to one side, watching the parade of vegetation-bearing robots emerging from the torn-open side of his ship over the tops of a pair of round-lensed sunglasses. He seemed unaffected by the sunlight emerging from behind the clouds, though that might have been attributed to the fact that dusk was drawing closer and the UV radiation was not as harsh as it would have been at midday. The computer had told Captain McCrea that albinos -which she had identified Captain Vescuya as- were sensitive to strong light. Of course, she had also said that the majority of human albinos were blind or only partially sighted, a quality that the white-haired Captain had never made any indication of. Indeed, his eyesight seemed uncannily sharp at times, but perhaps that was only because of the scalpel-sharp manner he had of looking at people.

The sunglasses helped with that aspect of his character, along with concealing the bizarre coloration and quality of his irises. Most of the colonists still clearly weren't sure of what to make of the thin, ghostly man in their midst, but the revelation of what he had been returning to Earth suggested that if nothing else, he couldn't be all that much of a threat. Not exactly personable, but also not dangerous. It was already difficult for them to grasp the concept that another human could be 'dangerous' in the first place; even McCrea couldn't quite understand it even with AUTO's warning.

That said, he had awaited Vox's return with a considerable amount of trepidation. He'd meant to demand if the strange Captain was indeed who he claimed to be, and if so to display proof of his identity since there was nothing to serve as evidence in the _Axiom_'s database. He still though it was bizarre that the ship itself was listed, and its type, but there was no mention of a Captain to go with it. AUTO had, to be frank, suggested bringing the stranger up to the bridge for questioning, but before Captain McCrea had a chance to even talk to the albino he had been nearly knocked over by EVE, who was nearly bursting with excitement and eagerness to bombard him with photographs she had taken from inside the _Absconditus_.

Captain Vescuya was off the hook, as the saying went. At least for now.

The albino glanced up at McCrea as the large man turned to him, and he inclined his head slightly in what could be interpreted as a nod of assent.

"Some of these samples are quite delicate," he responded, his rough, scratchy voice riding on a faint note of relief. "This one, for example." The tip of one finger touched the curling white-and-magenta edge of an orchid bloom. Decorative, he had said, but not particularly practical... although the flowers of some varieties were edible. "And with the... rough landing..." He trailed off, letting McCrea draw his own conclusions as to how the sentence would have ended. "They are descendants of what plant species the Buy 'n' Large Corporation was able to salvage before departure from Earth."

"And they wanted to make sure these little guys would be protected," Captain McCrea speculated. "So Shelby Forthright ordered a lockdown on all information involving them..."

"Shelby Forthright is not here," Vox replied, cryptically, still watching the Axiom's mechanical crew as they stacked plant samples along the edge of those already salvaged from the storage bays. They'd retrieved a few other resources as well: some samples of antibiotics; a preserved array of animal life; carefully-restored logs of the vegetation types and how to care for them.

"You can store them in the _Axiom_ until they can be transplanted," Captain McCrea offered, looking up from the grape vine he had been examining. "There are some nasty dust storms that come through here sometimes. I'm sure we can hook up something to keep them healthy in the meantime." He paused, then added, hesitantly, "You can stay there too, if you want. Since-" He cast a wry look at what was left of the _Absconditus_.

"Your hospitality is appreciated," Vox replied. Inclining his chin again.

McCrea reflected, dryly, that the albino Captain's weirdly formal way of speaking was something that would really take some getting used to in the future. The thin stranger rose slowly to his feet, casting a quick look up to the sky. The light had gone from yellow to rich orange-gold by that time, accompanied by a subtle lessening in temperature.

"I suppose we should get them inside," he surmised, "before it gets too dark."

--

AN: Whew, that ending was a little abrupt, but it was the best I could do, heh.

So now you know what Vox was so on edge about before.

_OR DO YOU_?

...

I really should stop doing that.


	7. Chapter 6

And now we come to Chapter 6 of this escapade, wherein...

...No, no, I'm not going to fall into that trap. Bad Metro. Bad. You'll see in a moment.

I'm making an effort to have the story focus a lot more on the canon characters and their interactions with one another; I hope I've managed to pull it off convincingly here.

MOVING ON!

Wall-E is © Pixar.

Vox is © me.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 5

--

Much to his surprise, M-O discovered that he liked gardening.

Until the maintenance androids had refitted him with equipment that was of more use on Earth than a squeegee, he had remained steadfastly inside the _Axiom_, except on those occasions when he felt bold enough to venture out of doors and try cleaning one of WALL-E's many compacted cubes. Once his programming had been edited slightly so that he didn't go into an electronic version of a conniption every time he scanned the surrounding area (_foreign contaminants! Foreign contaminants everywhere!_), he became one of the colony's most industrious workers. His little tools could tunnel into the hard, compacted Earth faster than those of machines twice or even three times his size, to say nothing of their still-ponderous human counterparts.

Needless to say, it was a considerable source of pride for M-O to be so useful.

At the moment, a steady stream of dirt -interspersed with a steady, high-pitched whine not unlike that of a pneumatic needle- was fountaining up from the hole he was digging, already twice as deep as he was high. The reason for his enthusiasm was partly because WALL-E was peering down over the lip of it, his wipers swishing gently back and forth (as M-O sometimes couldn't tell where the detritus from his excavating was going to land), in preparation to insert a small leafy shrub into the aperture. The first time they had tried this sort of teamwork, the recycler had neglected to look and had nearly planted M-O along with the vegetation (his muffled shrieks had been detected by EVE, who was quick to dig him out), but with practice, their efforts had become much more coordinated.

Using his small makeshift spade like a mountaineer's pick, M-O finally clambered out of his hole, shaking himself all over to dislodge clinging soil. He couldn't help it- even with the change in directive, he was still something of a neat freak.

"M-O done?" WALL-E asked, cocking his visual orbit to one side in a pantomime of a human head-tilt.

His smaller companion responded by taking a leaf out of the other robot's book: M-O extended his arms in the direction of the whole with a tiny squeak of "Ta-dah!" Taking that to mean the affirmative, WALL-E trundled forward and lowered the plant into the hole, scooping clods of soil around it and patting them down with both hands. He was still hard at work compacting and stacking the mountains of trash still left in the city, but sometimes it was nice to have a bit of variety in his daily routine.

Besides... a pair of luminous white hands appeared next to his, smoothing down the ground on the opposite side, one finger just barely touching the edge of WALL-E's hand. EVE, who came along with him sometimes on his foraging expeditions, likewise was helping with the replanting process. Useful, and it gave the two robots an excuse to be in close proximity to one another, which made WALL-E nervous... but also good at the same time; a cocktail of those curious things called 'emotions' that he was still trying to sort out. She giggled as she worked, glancing coyly at him out of the corner of the screen that served as her 'face'.

"Ee-vah!" M-O, temporarily eclipsed by plant leaves, poked his head out into the open and waved his spade at the reconnaissance probe, cheerily. Like several of the other robots who had met WALL-E and EVE during the fiasco aboard the _Axiom_, he had taken to calling the latter by the same pronunciation as WALL-E used (much to EVE's combined amusement and annoyance). Thankfully, the malfunctioning robots had either been repaired or at least put to different tasks than this one; EVE shuddered to think of what might have happened if they had let HAN-S in among the plants. Regardless, she returned M-O's friendly greeting with an upturn of her eyes... then, catching a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, quickly zipped off in time to catch one of the human toddlers, who was in danger of tumbling into the burgeoning lettuce crop.

--

"Have there been any responses to our transmission yet?"

"**Negative, Captain**."

Captain McCrea bit back a heartfelt sigh. It had been close to a week since the _Absconditus_ had crashed into the wasteland, and since that time no other vessels had been forthcoming. he'd really hoped that they would be here by now... but AUTO had told him that it took time, even with relay stations, to project the message of welcoming ships back to Earth through the vast expanse of space. It was almost a ritual between them: every day, the Captain would go up to the bridge, and every day he'd get the same response. The AI had assured him that there were other ships out there -hundreds of them, presumably-; he'd just have to take AUTO's word for it. McCrea got impatient sometimes, that was all.

Today, however, there was one slight modification to the question-and-answer period: the Captain had not come alone. Vox was with him, standing to one side in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. His tattered, scorched attire had been replaced with undamaged clothing he'd pulled from his own ship- necessary, for the moment, since none of the wardrobe choices on board the _Axiom_ would fit him. They had tried one of the form-fitting, single-piece suits on him the first day, but its garish red (or, conversely, blue) coloration had made him look even more ghastly than usual. His hair, as opposed to its original dandelion-like, flyaway arrangement, was now combed neatly back from his forehead and stuck to his head and neck as if it had been painted on.

The colonists were still, naturally, getting used to the stranger in their midst. He didn't exactly make it easy for people to relax in his presence: there was a strange sense of distance in his body language, and he rarely spoke unless prompted somehow (usually in the form of a direct question). It was not that he wasn't helpful; just... _rigid_, maybe that was the word McCrea was looking for.

"Do you think-" McCrea stopped, then began again. "AUTO, is there any chance that transmission could have gotten fragmented somehow? I mean, the bit about revoking Directive A113 _is_ still in there, isn't it?"

"**Affirmative, Captain. Transmission remains unchanged**." AUTO's spokes rotated placidly a half-turn to the left. "**Presence of the _Absconditus_ suggests that other vessels will have received your message as well. I am monitoring all frequencies. If there are any developments, I will inform you immediately**."

McCrea supposed that he would just have to be satisfied with that, hard though it went with him.

"I can confirm that."

The unexpected voice almost made Captain McCrea jump; he had almost forgotten that Vox was standing on the bridge with the two of them. He had an uncanny knack for fading into the background when he wanted to. The albino shifted his attention away from the window he had been looking out of, glancing back over one shoulder at McCrea before rotating on his heel to face Captain and Autopilot alike. Although he did not smile -naturally; the man never did- his vocal cadences seemed marginally gentler. Although combined with the harsh, almost grating, quality of his speech, it didn't amount to that much of a difference.

"You shouldn't worry about the transmission being received," he told the man standing in the middle of the deck. "I relayed all information to the closest terminals as soon as the message was registered on board the _Absconditus_. All other vessels will know that the transmission has been responded to, and do likewise."

McCrea nodded slightly, although he clearly still was not convinced. All these assurances, and still nothing to show for it... well, it was starting to wear on him a bit. On the other hand, there were the new developments on the home front: what would serve as the colony's 'garden' was rapidly expanding thanks to Captain vescuya's contributions, though Vox had cautioned him that some of the plants might not survive the current climate, most especially those not resistant to frost.

"If you say so," he acquiesced, finally, and turned to head back out through the lift. "Let me know if anything unusual happens, won't you?"

"**Aye-aye, sir**."

Vox turned to follow the portly Captain, but had barely gotten halfway across the room before a hiss of hydraulics from almost directly behind his current position -and the distinctive voice that accompanied it- stopped him in his tracks.

"**One moment**."

McCrea looked over at AUTO in confusion, his eyebrows lifting in inquiry, as the AI extrapolated on what he had meant.

"**With your permission, I have questions for Captain Vescuya.**"

McCrea hesitated, but as Vox did not seem particularly perturbed by the request, he just shrugged once. He couldn't think of any reason to object; the Captain had been certain that the AI's taser had been removed before booting him up again. "Well.. okay," he allowed, after nearly a full minute had gone by. "I'll be down on the lido deck if you need me." To tell the truth, he would have preferred to stay and listen, but there was something in AUTO's cold electronic voice suggesting that was not what the Autopilot had meant.

"**Aye-aye, Captain**."

There was a brief period of quiet after the lift doors hissed shut, after which AUTO swiveled around to face the albino Captain at roughly eye level. The AI had been patiently waiting for Captain McCrea to bring this interloper up on deck, as there was something that had been nagging at the back of AUTO's neural processors ever since news had reached it of the stranger's arrival.

That faint, nagging question had solidified, over the past few days, into something much more concrete.

"**Who are you?**" the AI demanded without preamble.

"I am Vox," his subject of scrutiny responded evenly, and though he did not shrug as the Captain had done, there was much of the same atmosphere contained in his words.

"**You are not what you appear**." There was no doubt whatsoever in those six words, spoken as they were with absolute finality.

"I am what I have claimed to be," Vox replied, unblinking, his arms neatly folded behind his back.

"**You are lying. You are not what you appear**." AUTO made a slow circuit around the albino Captain, examining him from all sides. "**Who are you? Identify yourself**."

"That is not the question you should be asking." Pause. "I never lie."

AUTO pulled back slightly, much in the same manner of a human being inclining his head, and his framework contracted abruptly. "**Explain**." This man, whoever he was, had an infuriating habit of speaking in something like riddles, and it was getting on AUTO's nerves (figuratively speaking).

Vox looked down at the floor for a second, collecting his thoughts, and then glanced back up. "You are concerned that my presence here may be a threat to these colonists, in some way?"

"**My current directive is to maintain and protect the continued existence of those humans that fall under my jurisdiction**," AUTO responded. That part of his programming had not changed one iota from the day he was first installed.

"I have no intention of harming this colony, human or otherwise."

There was a palpable moment of silence. Had he still retained all of his functions, AUTO believed that he could probably crowbar the information out of the albino, but at the moment it seemed that the two had achieved something of a stalemate.

"**I want your word**." It was a strange thing for a largely emotionless artificial intelligence unit to say, perhaps, but it was all that AUTO could think of until he had a chance to investigate this quandary further. He had no idea if such a 'word' would hold Captain Vescuya, but according to the files he'd researched over the past seven centuries (and his interactions with past Captains) suggested that humans took 'promises' very seriously.

One corner of Vox's mouth quirked up in what might have been the ghost of a smile. "Agreed."

"...**Very well**." AUTO slid backwards to the controls, opening the lift doors with the press of one claw. "**You are free to depart**."

But AUTO made a mental note to keep a very close eye on the _Absconditus_'s captain in the future. There was something strange about this entire sequence of events, and the AI fully intended to find out what it was.

Captain McCrea would thank him for it, later.

--

AN: As a wise man once said: "5 are true and 4 are lies- and there are some fibs mixed in with the truth."

...Well, actually that was part of a riddle in Silent Hill, but...

Oh forget it, listen not to my rambling. See you next time, yessss?

Gah, AUTO, you know I love you, but your dialogue is a pain to write.


	8. Chapter 7

Hey hey, my readers, we're back with Chapter 7.

In this segment, Vox goes for a walk. EVE investigates some curious developments. The author gets a Tic-Tac. (mmmm. orange.)

Wall-E is © Pixar (as always).

Vox is © Metrophor (ditto).

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 7

--

It was deep night, and technically, EVE should have been hibernating. Certainly everyone else was asleep, human and robot alike. Even WALL-E was slumbering, the light of the waning moon filtering down through the hole she'd blown in his -no, their- roof and bathing the whole of his little shelter in silver gilt.

It was an unusually clear night, the gaps in the clouds so close together that it sometimes looked like a thin layer of gauze had been pulled over the face of the night sky. But tonight was a special night, at least for the probe. She'd made sure that WALL-E was soundly ensconced in box form, and then she'd silently floated out through aforementioned hole in the roof, and gone hunting among the garbage piles in search of a present to surprise him with.

Why she would do such a thing, EVE wasn't certain, but the mischievous spark simply wouldn't be denied. She'd be feeling it in the morning, of that she had no doubt- though unlike WALL-E she did not run on solar power, her power source still needed time to recharge. All the same, she found herself coasting low over the ground, scanning the surrounding area with blue light. Not for plants this time, but instead for something unique she could tuck away inside her chest compartment until the time was right.

Trying to be as quiet as possible, she dug through a few of the loose pyramids, finding and then discarding things such as colored cellophane, broken lights of the halogen, neon and florescent varieties, a set of headless or otherwise mangled human-shaped dolls and a coiled spring of some kind that 'walked' itself down the garbage pile after she gave it a little push. Some of the things were nice, but none of them were quite what she was looking for.

A flicker of movement in the distance made the little robot's eyes narrow in confusion, unsure of what she was seeing. It had to be close to midnight; everyone was asleep, weren't they? So what was it she was looking at? Surely not a cockroach; it was far too big, and moved with distinct purpose, not erratically as an insect would have. Curious, she floated closer, ducking from trash pile to trash pile and staying as close to the ground or shady spots as she could manage, peeking around into the open during intervals when she was certain whatever-it-was didn't happen to be looking at her.

It was headed on a course parallel with the city limits, walking at a sedate pace and apparently with little concern for its surroundings. Clearly, it believed it was alone in the darkness, oblivious of the fact that someone else was out this late.

Then she finally got close to have a really good look, and blinked in consternation. The object of her scrutiny was undeniably human, though it moved over the hard, baked surface of the Earth so carefully -placing its feet just so to avoid any unnecessary jangle of garbage or crumpling of paper underfoot- that the human's passage was almost silent.

Then it turned its head in the moonlight, and her eyes narrowed to near slits.

The human was that strange Captain, and he was moving in such a manner that it was exceedingly clear to her now (though she hadn't picked up on it before) that he was sticking closely to the shadows just as she was, indicating an undeniable desire not to be seen. That did not seem like a simple late-night stroll to her. That seemed very, very suspicious.

Cocking her gun arm, she trailed after the albino at a healthy distance, as he made an oblique but foreseeable beeline for the ship on the edge of the wasteland. Why he would want to go there she wasn't sure, since they had cleared out the holds in the past few days already, but now the game was on and she was going to follow him until she found out. It wasn't that she wanted the albino to be doing something he shouldn't -far from it- but even the dimmest of bulbs could see that this was not standard operating procedure. If her thoughts could be put into a human context, they might have been something along the lines of: _The heck's he doing out at this hour?_

As the two oddly-matched travelers reached the bulk of the wreckage, respectively, EVE -from her hiding spot underneath one of the starship's crumpled thrusters- had to at least give Vox credit where it was due: he looked frail by comparison to the other humans in the colony; almost breakable in fact... but he was stronger than he looked. Considerably stronger, she observed, watching the Captain smoothly grab onto the edge of the half-retracted loading ramp and haul himself up using only the leverage of his arms.

Peeking in around the edge of the bay doors door, she made to coast along the route he had taken- then stopped, as something caught her eye. It was wedged right up against the corner of the doorway, where it met the wall: something tiny and apparently made of the same material as she was. Curious, she glided over to investigate, and then reached down, picking up... what?

It was a rectangle about the length of her hand from center finger to what passed for her wrist, notched at one end in an indication that it was meant to be plugged into something. No other distinguishing marks served to tell her what this object's purpose was, although when she turned it in the light just so, EVE got a glimpse of what looked like a microchip of some kind nestled deep inside.

Shrugging, she tucked the mysterious device into her chest compartment. She'd look at it later. Right now, she had more important things to keep an eye on.

Wait, _keep an eye on_! She'd almost forgotten about Captain Vescuya in the heat of the moment, and ducked over to the railing in time to catch a glimpse of him practically sliding down the stepladder, to the bottom of the very first circular storage area they had encountered.

Curiouser and curiouser, to borrow a line from one of the older books found in the Axiom: there was nothing left in this room that would warrant such secrecy. Nothing but empty shelves and a few smudges of dirt.

Or at least, so she thought, until EVE edged a little closer to the lip of the balcony in time to see the ground open up beneath Captain Vescuya by degrees.

There was a trap door. A trap door right under her nose, and she hadn't even noticed it.

She could be irritated with herself later: the concealed opening was devilishly clever; nearly invisible unless one knew what to look for- and now, of course, she did, though she made sure her security cams were functioning just in case. Captain McCrea would want to know about this, she knew. Vox had dropped through the gap too quickly for her to film, but the aperture was still (momentarily) wide open.

To explore, or not to explore? That was the question. Protocol dictated that EVE should wait for backup, or at least for WALL-E, who would probably be fascinated by all this, but... well, it might be dangerous down there; she had no idea what was through that hole and she didn't want to involve anyone she cared that much for without at least having some idea about what to expect.

Then, the opening began to slide closed, crescent-shaped segments fitting seamlessly into place with the rest of the floor, and she knew that it was now or never.

So EVE decided to go with 'now', and darted through just before the last few sections of the trap door hissed shut. The downside of this was that now she was more or less trapped in the bowels of an unfamiliar craft, but the recon probe at least took comfort in the knowledge that if all else failed, she could probably blast herself a brand new doorway.

The drop was only a matter of about ten feet; however, as it was nearly pitch-black by comparison inside the area the hole in the floor led to EVE barely managed to stop herself from smacking into the floor. Even when her eyes readjusted to compensate for the difference in lighting, she was surprised: this area was much, much more dimly lit than the rest of the _Absconditus_ had been, each side of the... was it a corridor?... lined with long, thin strips of luminous green light. Much like the passageway from the bridge to the storage chambers, the air was colder here, and perfectly still: no current to suggest either entry or exit from whatever secret area she had discovered.

EVE cast a swift, furtive glance around herself. There was no sign of Captain Vescuya, and she didn't like the thought of what his reaction would be if he discovered she had come down here with him. She would have had the feeling that this place was strictly off-limits even if it hadn't been so well hidden, though it went without saying that she wasn't certain why. There was nothing here, as far as she could tell, except for the almost circular corridor stretching off in either direction.

_Wait_.

There was a slight difference in air pressure inside the corridor to her left, suggesting that it went on for a shorter distance- indeed, she could see that it rounded a corner not far off; perhaps there was a room of some sort at the end. The corridor to the right followed a straight line, but she could see -by squinting hard- that there was a door set into the wall about halfway down its length. The question was, which route should she take?

More to the point, which route was less likely for her to be discovered?

Left. She'd try the left passageway first, and if nothing interesting turned up, she'd switch directions and try and have a look at whatever was through that door.

The probe floated on, hugging the wall as if she wanted to merge herself with it, at all times glancing about herself and listening intently for signs of movement. There was always the chance that there were security cameras in this area, or even patrolling drones, if the ship's landing hadn't damaged them. She doubted it: this area seemed barely touched by the crash, although it was still at a noticeable slant due to the angle of the ship.

Eventually, EVE came to the end of the corridor, which was, as she had predicted, terminated right after the corner she'd picked out from the surrounding dark. It was connected to a vast, rectangular chamber, as dimly lit as the hallway had been, and starkly, resoundingly empty.

Except for the thing that crouched in the exact center, a behemoth of strange geometric shapes and angles, its sooty black coloration at first making it nearly indistinguishable from the shadows that concealed it. EVE squinted; floated closer, her scanners momentarily sweeping the object with a grid of azure light. Her eyes widened into rounds of surprise as she circled the object of her scrutiny, scanning each side, filming it meticulously for later study.

It was a ship.

Actually, perhaps 'ship' wasn't the right word. Its main framework was obliquely bullet-shaped, except for the huge triangular wings on either side. They were folded up at the moment, the tips touching where they came together over the base of the vessel. It was not comparatively large; indeed, barely big enough for one pilot to fit comfortably inside. Low-slung and obviously designed to be both understated and as aerodynamic as possible, it rested on a tripod of flat, rectangular props. The sloped, sharply-pointed prow was covered by a shield of black-tinted glass that EVE could not see through even when she attempted to shine a light into the interior.

It was a sleek, elegant piece of work. And for reasons she couldn't quite place, EVE found it distinctly -_palpably_- menacing. Her design included security purposes, as evidenced by her efficient design and the powerful gun in her arm, but this thing had a distinctly predatory aura that was as different from her as she was from WALL-E. She pointed her gun at it, threateningly, for several moments until she was absolutely certain it wasn't going to move.

EVE shivered, and -flicking a glance over one shoulder- backed carefully away from the vessel lurking in the recesses of the chamber. She couldn't tell if there were any more of them. She didn't think so. She certainly wasn't going to stick around and find out.

Especially since now she could hear footsteps. Captain Vescuya was on his way back.

EVE muffled a squeak of alarm, and quickly hid behind the edge of the room she was in. But it seemed that the Captain wasn't coming in her direction- no, she saw, he was headed back up out of the concealed hatch. There was a ladder set into the wall, she could see now, for easy entry and exit for those beings that could not hover as she was able to. There was still the question of why he had come down here in the first place, but right at that moment EVE wanted nothing more than to get out of this ship, which clearly had far more to it than she'd thought. She wasn't at all sure that was a good thing, anymore.

She waited until the hole began to slide closed again, then carefully floated out into the open, half-expecting to be confronted by Vox at the edge of the opening.

She needn't have worried: he was gone; no sign of the albino anywhere in the room. That was a relief. She couldn't process what excuse would work to explain what she'd been doing in an area he clearly didn't want others to know existed. And, as always there was that slight concern that if he did surprise her, she might do something she regretted... like firing her gun at, say, his head. That would have been bad.

One thing was certain, however. She was going to have to take her discoveries straight to the Axiom first thing in the morning.

WALL-E's present was just (sigh) going to have to wait.

--

AN: Next chapter, things get odder still, and some preconceptions must, by necessity, change.

Wow I can't think of anything else to say about this chapter, lawl. ONWARD!

...Mmm. Tic-Tac.


	9. Chapter 8

Goodness, it's Chapter 8 already? How the time does fly.

It's time for the first of the real revelations. Har har.

Also it's the longest chapter yet. Ow. XD

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 8

--

"**It's a Stinger**."

EVE's security footage was being projected onto the wall of the _Axiom_ bridge, observed by a quartet of interested viewers.

Actually it was more a trio of interested viewers: the fourth, WALL-E, was in box form off to one side. He had awakened that morning to find that EVE was up before he was; he'd seen her heading to the _Axiom_ while his solar cells were recharging. Not knowing what it was she was up to, he had prepared for work and then caught up with her (with difficulty), but all she'd said in lieu of an explanation was "Directive".

That word, though it represented the first conversation they'd ever had, carried with it a fear that EVE would wind up trying to run off somewhere and leave him behind like she'd almost done the last time, or worse, that she'd go back to dormancy and let him go through the motions of agonizing worry in the meantime.

So, in spite of her protests, he'd followed along. She'd been borderline annoyed with him at first, but relented before they'd gone halfway to the lido deck. She even showed him a curious object she'd found: something shiny and white, just like EVE, though of course it wasn't as interesting or pretty. He'd spent the rest of the trip fiddling with it in an attempt to figure out what it was the rectangle was supposed to do, only looking up when EVE finally came to a halt.

WALL-E had immediately screamed and disappeared into his box mode, quivering on the floor and positioning himself firmly behind EVE. A logical response, considering when he had looked up, the first thing the robot saw was AUTO hanging from the ceiling. With the shock-kiss that EVE had given him after he'd been crushed, all his memories had come flooding back... and oh yes, he most certainly remembered that this particular AI had attempted to kill him. So it stood to reason that the unexpected appearance of his nemesis would elicit a response of sheer terror.

EVE, meanwhile, had sat glaring up at the black-and-white unit as if she would have liked to dismantle him, but couldn't because that would mean destroying most of the bridge. AUTO, of course, reacted to neither WALL-E's fears nor EVE's angry stare... although if looks could kill, he knew that he most assuredly would have been dead at that moment. Captain McCrea had been the one to assure the other two machines that the Autopilot wasn't going to do anything unpleasant, but it had not been enough of a reassurance to warrant WALL-E coming out of his shell.

The current topic of discussion, the one that AUTO had responded to, involved the film clips EVE had taken of the low-slung, unpleasant-looking vessel in the depths of the _Absconditus_. The low lighting made it difficult to pick out until EVE's sensors had swept over it, but AUTO had seen enough of the ship to match it with some of the examples in the computer database. It was hard to discern inflection in the AI's flat monotone voice, but he sounded uncharacteristically grim.

"It's a what?" Captain McCrea replied, bewildered, as AUTO supplemented EVE's footage with a set of projected blueprints of the ship they were looking at. WALL-E peeked one eye out of his square bulk, cautiously, peeking up at the screens alongside EVE (though he ducked back down every time AUTO seemed about to move in his direction).

"**A Stinger**," the Autopilot repeated, patiently. "**The model was discontinued in the year 2100. It is either a relic, or it has been refurbished in the interim**."

"Well, okay, I get that... but I mean, define 'Stinger'."

This time it was not AUTO who answered the Captain's query, but the Axiom computer itself, feminine voice smoothly insinuating itself into the conversation. As with anything else it was asked to define, it flashed several photographs of the vessel onto a viewscreen, looking at the ship from multiple angles.

"_Model 3173 Stinger_," the computer intoned. "_A military vessel meant for use both within atmosphere and on short, carrier-mounted forays into space. These ships were designed for high maneuverability and superior speed, and as a result were not as heavily armed as other models. Discontinued by the Buy 'n'; Large Corporation due to liquidation of armed forces. Existing models are believed to have been dismantled and recycled for parts_."

McCrea stared blankly from the the computer's photographs to EVE's security footage. it was without a doubt the same type of ship. But he still had a hard time getting a handle on why exactly it would be on board a storage vessel. He wasn't slow, and he certainly wasn't stupid, but this development simply didn't make any kind of logical sense to him. Why would the _Absconditus_ be carrying military equipment?

He knew what the military was. Captain McCrea made a point to keep up with his history; it was part of the job of being a Captain. The details were hazy, either due to the time gap or editing by the BnL corporation, but he knew that just before the corporation's rise to power there had been a war. A terrible war... in fact it had been the BnL coup that had helped bring the conflict to an end, though he didn't recall any details other than that. They had claimed there was no more need for weapons...

Clearly, someone had disagreed.

"**It seems my suspicions were correct**," AUTO remarked, rotating to look at the Captain. "**Sir, this ship is a danger to **_**Axiom**_** passengers**." Pause. "**As is its pilot**."

"D'you mean this Sting... whatever? Or the _Absconditus_? Because I don't think it's that-"

"**Both**."

"Well there's got to be a logical explanation to this," McCrea protested. "Didn't you say Captain Vescuya told you he wasn't going to be a threat?"

"**That was before I was aware of these newest developments**."

"You're really going to put your foot down on this one, aren't you."

"**Autopilots do not have feet**."

"You know what I mean!"

"**Correct, Captain**."

Captain McCrea shook his head in disappointment. "Well," he hazarded, "I guess we'd better talk to Vox about this. Maybe he can clear all this up." He began to turn, clearly with the intention of going to find the albino, but was stopped as AUTO suddenly shot out a claw and caught hold of his jacket sleeve.

"**With respect, Captain, I advise against this course of action**."

"How come?" McCrea demanded, apparently having temporarily forgotten that there were others in the room. "How else are we supposed to figure out what's going on if we don't ask?"

"**Captain of the **_**Absconditus**_** may react... unpredictably... when presented with this information**," AUTO pointed out. He hesitated. "**Suggest further investigation before approaching...**" Another brief hesitation. "**...Captain Vescuya**."

The annoyance faded off of Captain McCrea's face, replaced by a dawning sense of complete astonishment. Could it be the AI -whose purpose, for as long as McCrea had known him, had been to maintain the status quo- was actually suggesting that-?

"Are you saying we should just go on in and take a look around? Without permission?"

"**Affirmative**."

--

Elsewhere, in the _Absconditus_'s framework, there were the faint stirrings of electronic intelligence. The computer, damaged as it had been, previously had not been able to either boot up nor access those functions specifically designated to it. But Vox had been visiting the ship nearly every day, working -to the best of his limited ability- to repair the damage. And now...

_Hull integrity compromised._

A slight electrical hum rose in volume for a moment. A button, glowing softly red in the poorly-lit depths of the ship's metallic innards, flickered... and then metamorphosed, its crimson shine shifting to a vivid green.

_Running emergency backup program..._

--

Why AUTO had suggested that Captain McCrea should accompany EVE (since she knew the way) and WALL-E (since he refused to be parted from EVE) was completely beyond the man, but then, AUTO tended to do quite a lot of things that were cryptic at first glance. Possibly he'd wanted to be certain the two robots would have a reminder to stay on task... not so much a problem for EVE as it was for WALL-E, but whatever the reason, it had been a tense few moments wherein the Captain had not been entirely certain he would actually fit through the trap door (he had).

He had, however, needed to grab for the wall, due to the tilt of the ship and the fact that he had needed to actually drop the last few feet to the hallway floor. Presently, all three were gathered in the corridor, EVE and the Captain facing in one direction and WALL-E in another. The area was just as EVE remembered it: faint, greenish light only just illuminating the shadowy recesses of the ship's hidden area, atmosphere still and cold and ever-so-slightly clammy.

There was no fear, this time, of discovery: Mary had commandeered him (somehow) into helping her watch over the younger colonists. The stoic albino Captain was usually, by contrast, stork-awkward in such social gatherings and so quiet he might as well have been mute, but he was, at least, occupied with something that would keep his attention away from the ship for a fair amount of time.

Enough time, hopefully, for the mismatched trio to get to the bottom of things.

If everything went as planned on such expeditions, it would have been a perfect world. Certainly it started out that way: McCrea and WALL-E followed eve as she led them down the shorter corridor, shining a light down the hallway for the benefit of those not intended to operate in low-light conditions.

They had, in fact, almost reached the hangar before something caught WALL-E's eye. In this case, it was a faint sign of movement from the periphery of his vision, far off in the opposite direction eve was heading. He paused, glanced at his two companions; looked back at the object of his curiosity.

Backandforth. Backandforth. Almost too rapidly for the speeds his head was designed to move. But the movement was, temporarily, too tantalizing to ignore. It was, in fact, much the same level of inquisitiveness that had led the little robot to chase a certain point of red light to its inevitable conclusion. He'd nearly been crushed by a descending rocket, sure, but if he hadn't gone after it he might never have made EVE's acquaintance. He crept backwards toward the movement, trying to be stealthy even though he wasn't designed for it (and, all right, he just wasn't that good at it either). He fully expected EVE to turn around and drag him back to where he was supposed to be... but she was immersed in investigating the hangar contents with the Captain, and hadn't noticed the sound of WALL-E's treads retreating, rather than moving forward.

When he'd gotten enough distance between himself and the other two, WALL-E worked up his courage enough to stop creeping and go into a normal roll, following the last place he'd seen that subtle little movement.

There it was again, scuttling along the ground near the wall, moving in and out of the light.

He lost it- No, _there_, it was off on the other side of the wall now. WALL-E quickened his pace, squinting, humanlike, as he closed the distance. It was so small, hardly as long as his hand. If he just sped up a little bit more...

The skittering object suddenly stopped, and just as quickly reversed direction, zooming up to him and then up him, running in a tight circle before coming to rest on what served as his shoulder. WALL-E let out a yelp of surprise, then raised both hands to his face in mimicry of a human covering his mouth.

_Hal-?_

He'd totally forgotten about his 'pet' when they had started this expedition. No matter, for it seemed the cockroach hadn't forgotten _him_.

WALL-E almost giggled, but caught himself in time, instead tickling the top of the insect's head with the tip of one metal finger. Hall chittered at the attention, running from one side of WALL-E's body to the other before settling again on the recycler's opposite shoulder. His antennae quivered in the air, perhaps picking up vibrations or frequencies invisible to his perch.

That was when WALL-E realized that he'd left the corridor altogether in his pursuit of the roach, and was now resting at the border of a room that was much more well-lit than the hallway... though it was, admittedly, still very dim. The lighting was about on par with dusk, except that the coloration was still a poisonous sea-green rather than gold or orange or any of the other fiery colors he'd come to associate with sundown. It was also narrow, barely wide enough for two of the _Axiom_'s human passengers to walk abreast of one another, but very long, possibly about a hundred feet from end to end.

Each side was lined by high cylindrical objects of frosted dark glass set directly into the walls, their contents obscured by whatever coated both the inside and outside of the protective coverings. The air wasn't quiet here, as it was elsewhere in the ship: it hummed; no, _vibrated_ with electrical currents, the sound rising and falling in pulsating waves that WALL-E could feel through his entire body.

Curious, the robot extended his neck upwards as far as it would go, and began to roll the length of the room, peering this way and that into each out of a futile desire to see what was inside. Ice frosted the outsides of some, or evaporated into the air as little curling wisps of steam.

One of the chambers, about halfway down the room's length on the right side, was partially clear of frost on the inside. Ah-ha. Now he might finally get a look at what was in them. more plants, maybe? ..No, plants didn't like the cold, did they? But what, he wondered, did? The opposite of plants? What was the opposite of plants?

He stretched a little closer, pressing his 'eyes' to the side of the container, and-

At first, EVE didn't recognized the high-pitched shriek as WALL-E's voice. Neither did Captain McCrea, who exchanged a wide-eyed, perplexed look with the probe robot before turning to look at the source. They didn't have to be confused for very long: a few seconds after the shriek started, WALL-E practically flew into the room, arms over his head, screaming all the while. Once he caught sight of the two he instantly shot into his box, rocking dangerously on one side and taking out an entire bank of green-tinted lights in the process. The room, already dark, became darker still as EVE rushed over to the little rust-stained robot, annoyance and concern intermingling in her voice.

"WALL-E!"

One eye peeked out of his box, which was shaking from side to side violently. Something had frightened him; frightened him badly. WALL-E was so curious and upbeat that it made him a difficult person to scare (unless you were shooting at him), EVE had discovered. She cocked her gun arm, squinting defiantly into the gloom. She hadn't heard any gunshots, but that didn't mean there was nothing out there.

Yes- something was moving out there. Something large, deliberately heading for their current position, _fast_. There was a horrible rasp of metal on metal; a brief flare of blue-white light as arcs of electricity jumped from something about three feet up to the ground with an unpleasant snapping sound.

_Intruders detected in restricted area. Initiating precautionary measures._

EVE wasn't taking any chances. If this ship had a self-defense mechanism, she didn't want to meet it. This thing had scared WALL-E out of his wits, and that was something that made EVE angry. And when EVE got angry, things didn't tend to stay in one piece for long.

Before Captain McCrea could stop her, she aimed directly at the moving shape and fired, releasing a pulse of energy as blue-white as any star- and equally as lethal, if it hit what she was aiming at.

_**FZZAK**_!

The ship actually rocked slightly with the impact, a gaping, smoking hole now torn out of the wall behind her target, which had managed to avoid having its head taken off by dropping straight down in a low crouch. Something metallic clanged against the wall, then rolled off in some indiscernible direction. She cocked her gun arm and took aim at the whatever-it-was, prepared to blast it into oblivion if it made any funny movements... but stopped, when it opened its mouth and spoke in a very familiar voice, although the lack of any intimidation or fear made the situation somehow even more bizarre than it already was.

"You should not be here," Vox said, his voice level and as cold as liquid nitrogen. He straightened slowly up from his position on the ground, his eyes two points of reflective, reddish-pink light in the shadows. He wouldn't even have known they were there if it hadn't been for the warning he'd gotten from the ship's computer. "Your presence is a breach of security."

He might have said something more; with all the tension in the air it was unknown what might have happened had the situation been allowed to continue.

However, the words had barely left the albino's mouth before a second voice broke the uncomfortable silence that followed in its wake, not ten feet behind his current position.

"Jesus, AUTO," it said, in a tone that was both amused and chagrined. And oh yes, in spite of its somewhat deep pitch, it was also undeniably feminine. "You couldn't have landed the ship a little more gracefully, could you?"

--

AN: Yeah, um.  
Cue maniacal laughter here. X3


	10. Second Interlude

So, yeah. M.L., you called it first. :3

Not that I was being particularly subtle, mind you.

So now we have the second interlude with which to tease you.

Next chapter'll be up later today, mah people.

Enjoy.

Wall-E is © Pixar

Vox (and the actual Captain Vescuya) are © me.

--

Ex Machina

Second Interlude

--

The machined threads of the heavy steel bolt gleamed softly in the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights as the redhead in the Captain's quarters carefully worked the gooey, lead-gray anti-seize compound into them with a small acid brush.

She eyed the coating for any thin spots, then gently threaded the bolt into its proper hole in the cylinder head. A moment to peer inside the grease-smudged technical manual that lay to one side, then she dialed the proper setting into the torque wrench, set its socket firmly upon the bolt head, and began to turn. Several seconds later, a quiet click issued from the Geiger-esque snarl of electrical equipment and disconnected mechanical parts. She backed the bolt out about a quarter-turn, then furrowed her brows and tightened it back down.

The woman felt her lips curve upwards into a slight smile as the bolt traveled almost a half-turn further than before, by the time the click came again.

_Perfect_.

She straightened, grimacing as her back told her in no uncertain terms what it thought of people who spent hours hunched like Quasimodo over greasy lumps of cold metal. The redhead stretched, then wiped her hands on a bit of an old washcloth as she turned to survey the web-like mass of wiring that spread itself across the majority of the floor of her room, rolling her shoulders back as she did so. That little project was going to take a while to finish; luckily, she was going to have all the time she needed. And then some.

In fact, time was all she was going to have in the foreseeable future, during her tenure as Captain for this cockeyed project of her superiors. Not that she knew very many details other than what they thought she needed to be aware of: the redhead was under no illusions that she'd been assigned to this ship for any other reason other than she knew how to operate it and she was fully capable of dealing with any problems that might arise.

Had the _Absconditus _been fully devoid of any other sentient presence, as had been many of the vessels she'd piloted in the past, Lenne might have been concerned about how the following years were going to wear on her. She knew all too well how isolation could affect the human psyche: it was a standard part of training for space travel, when the only human presence a pilot had might be the thin, unreliable transmissions from Ground Control. And that was only for a maximum of six months or so. By comparison, this assignment... well. The mind boggled.

Luckily, she wouldn't have to worry about going completely stir-crazy this time around: the people in charge of the _Absconditus_'s construction had installed a sophisticated AI unit up on the flight deck. It wasn't Lenne's first choice of a companion, but it was better than nothing. At least now she'd have someone to talk to.

Speaking of...

The soldier ran both hands through her short, bowl-cut hair, realizing that even though they were only about half a day into the flight she hadn't come up onto said flight deck save for a perfunctory inspection of the electrical systems and to set up her terminal. It had been three in the morning, granted, and the flight over from HQ had been draining -since most of it had consisted of being briefed on what her duties were- but she supposed she might as well go up there and make nice. The system hadn't even been activated when she'd gotten in.

How she had managed not to wake up during the countdown and liftoff, Lenne still wasn't sure... but, hell, her commanding officer _had_ always said she could sleep through anything if she put her mind to it.

_Good old Mark. He would have gotten a real kick out of something like this_.

Lenne started toward the elevator, then stopped, and looked down at herself: clad in nothing but a standard short-sleeved top and the wrinkled bottoms of her deep crimson dress fatigues, stained with grease and sweat and probably looking as though she had been dragged through a trench after a heavy rain.

Right.

Shower first, _then_ making nice. Yeah. That'd do.

--

There were about five seconds of coherent thought available to the female soldier when she stepped out of the elevator onto the bridge, and then her mind reasserted itself to a comfortable blank. She was used to short expeditions out into space, just a short orbit around Earth and back again, but those brief little trips out of atmosphere had done nothing to prepare her for the view out of the deck's transparent protective screens.

There were so many stars. So close she thought she could reach out and touch them if she were to attempt it; not cold and distant as in those forays around the planet's orbit. There, they had been like a handful of jewels flung out at random on the cloak of night. By contrast, this... this was an almost interrupted swath of glowing... _something_, sometimes so dense she couldn't make out where the stars ended and where galaxies or other celestial bodies began. To the left of the ship, she could see that they were passing unusually close to some glowing sweep of luminous gas, not quite a nebula, its shifting colors reminiscent of the Northern Lights.

Then she shook herself, and tried to concentrate; tried not to be totally overwhelmed by the prospect of being so far away from the planet she had grown up on. Just in time, too, for at the same moment she stepped a little more solidly onto the bridge, there was the overhead sound of shifting gears, and _something_ sitting placidly at the exact center of the room turned to look at her.

Oh yes, she remembered this from the little whirlwind tour the day before: it was one of the BnL Autopilots, the same model they'd chosen as standard for the star liners... possibly for their other ships as well; Lenne honestly wasn't sure. Funny, though: she was used to their paint jobs being simple black-and-white. With this one... Well, they'd gotten the white down, sure enough, but where the black patterning should have been the machine was instead painted a sort of misty gray. It might not even been paint: possibly they hadn't had time to complete the job to specifications, and that was the base color of the... whatever it was they used as a protective covering.

If that was the case, she hoped the design was the _only_ thing that hadn't gotten finished on time.

"Well hey there," she said, moving in the AI's direction and looking it up and down with a critical eye. Efficient design- sleek, elegant, not a single extraneous design or out-of-place equipment. Very nice. She had to hand it to whoever designed these things: they knew how to please the crowd.

The single crimson eye in its center, though. That designer obviously had a warped sense of humor; she could practically hear Stanley Kubrick rolling in his grave right then and there. If the machine noticed the not-so-subtle once-over, it declined to comment on it, instead rising (apparently through the ceiling) until it was at roughly eye level with its human counterpart.

"**Good morning, Captain Vescuya**."

Lenne couldn't suppress a startled jerk, surprised by the rough-edged, masculine voice that came more or less out of nowhere. The next moment, she felt like kicking herself: well _of course_ it would be able to respond to verbal stimuli. Deep and inflectionless, its speech patterns were much more _robotic_ than, frankly, most AI units she'd come across.

The redhead cleared her throat, awkwardly, then shrugged and attempted a smile. It came out feeling slightly crooked. "You can call me Lenne, if you want," she remarked. She was only a stand-in, after all; being called 'Captain' seemed -to her- both faintly pretentious and inaccurate. One eyebrow rose as a thought occurred to her: possibly it was programmed to respond to formal titles. "Or Major."

"**Understood, Captain Vescuya.**"

Lenne sighed, although she refrained from pinching the bridge of her nose in between her thumb and forefinger, as she sometimes did when something exasperated her. "D'you have to be so formal? We're the only ones around to hear it."

"**Affirmative, Captain.**"

It'd be programmed in, then. _Damn_. Well, there was nothing she could do about it at the moment; she might as well just go with the flow. One hand reached out to pat the AI on the curve of its spokes, as she might do to the shoulder of another human. "Well, all right then." A pause, followed by a slight dip of the head. "So! What's _your_ name?"

The Autopilot looked down at the human standing in front of it, neural processors carefully acquiring and cataloguing new information. It had already been provided a description and voice recognition with which to identify the captain of its ship: Vescuya, Lenne, military engineer, a former Major in the BnL Air Force... that was to say, when the BnL Air Force had actually existed.

She wasn't particularly tall, as humans went; no more than 5' 4", and at least half an inch of that was due to her thick-soled footwear. Her skin was nut-brown under normal light; registered by its red-lensed viewing apparatus it seemed darker still. And there was something strange about her eyes.

It zoomed in slightly, perplexed, on a pair of almond-shaped eyes whose irises were decorated by what looked like the notches on a camera lens, designating millimeter-marks at regular intervals. Unlike the other humans the Autopilot was programmed to identify, the Captain's pupils weren't rounded. Instead, they were vertical slits, the lenses reflectant for use in low-light settings.

A combat cyborg.

Now that was _hardly_ SOP.

But- it would have to look over her file later. Right now, the Captain had put a question to the AI, and it was programmed to answer all queries posed to it as soon as possible. So.

"**I am designated Autopilot A778**," it replied. Then, almost as an afterthought: "**AUTO**."

"'AUTO', huh?" Lenne rubbed her chin with one hand, a slow, smoldering smile that had an almost sadistic edge to it stealing across her face. "That's hardly original."

The Autopilot didn't respond, either because it couldn't think of anything that would serve as a proper comeback or because it didn't think the comment warranted one.

"Yeah..." Lenne mused, tilting her head in first one direction, then the other. "I think you need something more unique. Something with a little more pop to it." She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling as if seeking divine, inspiration- then abruptly snapped her fingers, recalling how he'd startled her when she'd first heard him speak: that voice, sounding like it was coming practically out of the walls.

"Ah. _I_ know," she said, her smile widening: "I'll call you-"

--

SOP- _S_tandard _O_perating _P_rocedure


	11. Chapter 9

Yeah, that's right people. I am throwing the goat right now, and it is _too metal for one hand_.

...That made no sense at all, did it?

Ah well.

On we go to chapter nine.

(Also, to forestall any possible comments on the subject... no, Lenne is not, in fact, related in any way to FFX-2.)

Whee!

Wall-E is © Pixar

Lenne and Vox are © moi.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 9

--

"-Vox, you have got some '**_splaining to do_**."

All three of the _Absconditus_'s unauthorized visitors gaped at the person standing well back into the corridor, then glanced back at the albino in front of them, who -by the look of his silhouette- had gone completely rigid at the sound of the strange voice. Whoever-it-was didn't sound angry so much as extremely confused, and even the confusion was flavored by a hint of what might have been concealed laughter. The last words were spoken in strident tones, laden with some unidentifiable accent that was probably affected rather than the stranger's own.

Her demand for appraisal of the situation was not responded to immediately, though WALL-E did peek the very edge of one eye out of his box when he was certain no one was going to make an attempt on his life. The action was followed soon thereafter by a low sigh and the sound of shifting feet.

"Why are we all standing around in the dark?" the unseen newcomer wondered aloud, and there was a sharp slapping of flesh-against-flesh: clapping, as McCrea did whenever he came up to the _Axiom_'s bridge in the morning. There wasn't any reaction for about two heartbeats, and then -one after the other- overhead circles of soft yellow light hummed into existence. The eyes of EVE, WALL-E, and Captain McCrea went (respectively, and not necessarily in that order) to first the lights themselves, then to Vox, and finally to the person standing behind him.

The former looked, frankly, like someone who had just swallowed a tack, and seemed to be working up to a response when he was suddenly elbowed to one side by the source of the prior questions.

Short, alarmingly red hair, dark skin, and eyes that were so vibrantly green as to seem almost luminous: an odd combination of colors to be sure, and quite distinctive when paired with the ghostly man standing next to her. Her head barely came up to his shoulder, as well, and she was considerably stockier in build than the albino... though not so heavyset as any of the _Axiom _passengers. She looked... _hard_, maybe that was the word; uncompromising. But the creases around the corners of her eyes, clear enough in the sudden light, were laugh lines, so she couldn't have been as severe as her physical appearance warranted.

Her attire consisted of dark, loose-fitting clothing that had an oddly mottled appearance to it, a thick, beaded metal chain sporting a pair of finger-length steel rectangles hanging around her neck.

"Who... what?" Captain McCrea garbled, as confused as she was and then some. "_What_?!"

'Where did _you _come from?' was what he would have liked to ask, but his vocal cords didn't seem to be working properly for some reason. WALL-E just hid behind EVE, peeking out around one side of the reconnaissance probe as if he fully expected to be lashed out at. He wasn't as terrified as he had been, but he also wasn't willing to get one step closer to the male-female duo.

EVE was, in keeping with her nature, the boldest of the three (four if you counted Hal), and was keeping each of the aforementioned duo in her gun sight, more willing to be safe than sorry. "Who are you?" she demanded, slurring the words together into an electronic scale that sounded more closely related to 'whooaoo'. She stabbed her gun at the woman in a pointing motion for emphasis, just as she had when she'd met WALL-E near the piles of used tires, way back during their first meeting.

The lady in question just folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back, one side of her mouth twisting in a wryly speculative expression. She wasn't armed herself, EVE could tell, and neither was Vox, but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. Just... slightly less likely to cause trouble.

"Major Lenne Vescuya," the woman replied after a moment, poking herself in the chest with a finger. "Acting Captain of the _Absconditus_, which is, as I'm sure you're aware, _the ship you are on._" And which you just blew a nice gaping hole in, she thought, but did not add. It was usually not a good idea to direct snark at someone aiming a gun at you. Her eyes flicked to one side at WALL-E, then up at Captain McCrea. "Who the hell are you?"

EVE did not appreciate this "Captain's" tone, a reaction which displayed itself in a further downturn and narrowing of her eyes. Captain McCrea, on the other hand, pointed one stubby index finger in disbelief at first Lenne, then at Vox, and back again. "_Captain Vescuya_?"

"The one and only." She spread both arms out to her sides, briefly, fixing McCrea with a toothy smile.

"But I... you..." He stopped, collected his thoughts, and finished with, "You said _you _were Captain Vescuya!" His words, and his finger, were directed at Vox, who had obviously been trying to fade into the background up until that point.

The redhead turned to look up at the albino, astonishment replacing chagrin in terms of facial expression. "Excuse me. You said _what_?" she asked him.

"Actually," Vox interjected, visibly uncomfortable with the direction this whole scenario had taken, "I said nothing of the kind." He blinked, once, and then went on. "You _assumed _I was the Captain. I was not thinking clearly when you pulled me from the wreckage, and was trying to piece together a working idea of the situation."

"You could have _told _me!"

"You did not ask if I was the Captain." His head tipped slightly to one side in what passed for a shrug.

"So then if you're not the Captain, who-?" McCrea pressed both sets of fingertips against his temples.

"What," EVE corrected, pointedly, not taking her eyes off of her potential targets.

"-_What_ are you?"

Vox hesitated, and looked at the redheaded woman next to him with something that was about as close to a look of pleading as his nearly expressionless face was liable to go. "I-"

Lenne smirked, and pointed at the albino with her far hand. "Stoic; humorless; doesn't talk much; too formal for his own good. Can't you figure it out?"

McCrea grabbed the sides of his head as if trying to hold it together as the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that _he's the Autopilot_?"

The redhead clapped her hands once, then flinched when the sharp sound drew a warning whine from EVE's firearm. "Bingo." There was a brief, charged silence, and then she leaned forward, crossing her arms again in a posture that EVE _knew _meant trouble. "Now, would one of you _fine people _kindly care to tell me _what the hell is going on_?"

--

"...and that's pretty much when you showed up," McCrea finished, his summary interspersed with clips from EVE's security camera and minor additions by Vox from time to time. Although the tension had lessened slightly, the confusion had not, and EVE was still sticking like glue to WALL-E. Both robots, for good reason, shared a deep mistrust of AUTO units, and it didn't particularly matter to the former that this one happened to be person-shaped. He was still a taser-happy steering wheel, as far as she was concerned.

"I see." Captain Vescuya -the _real _Captain Vescuya- was half-leaning, half-sitting on the prow of the Stinger (which didn't look any less menacing under strong light), chin propped on the backs of both hands. Her elbows were planted firmly on one knee.

She glanced up at Vox, who was standing pointedly at attention to one side of her, then sighed and pressed her index and center fingers to her forehead, in between her eyebrows. "It looks like we owe all of you an apology." EVE blinked at that, and WALL-E, who was much too friendly to stay frightened for very long (it was too much effort doing something he didn't like) lifted his head a little bit more out of his box.

The red-haired shoulder propped the side of her jaw against one fist, drawing circles on her cheek with the index finger of that hand. "I have to hand it to you," she said after a moment's silence. "You've all done way more to take this planet back than anyone... in my day... was willing to. Very impressive."

"Uh... thanks." McCrea looked embarrassed, still not used to people actually congratulating him, "but it was really these two more than anyone that brought us back." He pointed at EVE and WALL-E, the latter of which waved his hand in acknowledgement. Lenne's eyes flicked down at the compactor robot and his glossily white guardian, eyebrows lifting in surprise.

"Really?" The eyebrows rose a fraction more, and then she smiled, delight stealing into her husky voice. "Ha! That's brilliant! If the programmers could see them now... man, what I wouldn't give to see the looks on their faces..." She trailed off, realizing that the posse in front of her was now staring in her direction to a one, apparently waiting for her to stop talking. "...What?"

"You," EVE replied, pointing up at the redhead intently. She meant to ask what the soldier was doing there, and more to the point, where she had just come from. As far as EVE knew, there wasn't any way (or reason why) she could have stayed down here the entire time without somebody noticing. At least her life sensors would have picked up body heat on board... she hoped.

Frankly, McCrea's thoughts ran along much of the same lines. "Uh," he began hesitantly, running a fingertip along the brim of his hat in a self-conscious manner, "how come you've been down here the whole time? Why didn't you come out?" It wasn't like anyone was going to hurt her; that was the last thing the colonists had in mind. They would have welcomed newcomers with open arms, even if they were... well, to be honest, _really strange_.

Captain Vescuya didn't answer him at once; merely regarding the heavyset man with hooded eyes. She seemed to wrestle with some internal argument for some moments... then sighed, glanced at Vox, and pushed off from the Stinger.

"I guess there's just no way around it, AUTO," she remarked, folding her hands behind her head and interlocking her fingers. "You can color our cover blown."

"Indeed, Captain."

"Right." She took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly, heading back down the corridor the way she had come. She paused after a few steps, and then looked back, her face unreadable. "Follow me. I'll show you what this ship's _real _cargo is."

--

The three visitors to the Absconditus stood and stared at the long, narrow corridor- or, more specifically, into the ranks of cryogenic chambers that lined its walls and the people within. Young, old, male, female: every shape and size, every color available to humanity, all lined up neatly in their protective containers, pale and still as death. Frost coated the faces and clothing of most, obscuring details that would have given their observers a better clue as to the identities contained within. Each was carefully labeled by a numerical sequence below a small round of light, and all the lights were red- save one, which glowed green.

It was witnessing these frozen humans that had petrified WALL-E, for he -along with anyone else that didn't recognize a cryogenic chamber when he saw one- had assumed that they were all deceased. It might have been strange for a robot who had spent seven hundred years alone to be afraid of a dead body, but then, a lot of things in the world defied reason these days.

Lenne walked slowly down the hall, touching each chrysalis lightly with the tips of her fingers. "Power brokers," she said. "Researchers. Accountants. Executives. People that BnL wanted to have ready and waiting for the return to Earth, when and if the day came that they could recolonize." She paused, then turned on her heel to fix the three behind her with a level stare. "The _Absconditus _is a flagship; it's the _advance guard_, not the whole show. My-" she cast a quick look over at Vox, who was loitering in the entryway "-_our_ assignment was to wait until we got conformation that the planet's toxicity levels had been reduced far enough to warrant our return, then send out the order to all the rest of the ships that were part of this mission. It just took a lot longer than anyone ever predicted."

"Then..." Captain McCrea pulled his head back, baffled. "You're-"

"Seven hundred years old?" Lenne laughed. "Not likely! Do I _look _like I'm seven hundred?"

No, she didn't, in fact. Rather, she looked about the same age as Vox's body: thirty-something, more than one but less than five.

"I've been frozen too," she explained, jerking a thumb at the chamber with the green light,"for most of the time. I'd just wake up for about a half-year every so often. Started as every couple of years... then, after Forthright canceled Operation Recolonize, it was more like once every twenty. Or more... I kind of lost track of time after a while." Her lopsided half-smile turned wry and faintly self-depreciating. "Technically I should have been awake before this, but with the damage to the computer systems-" She shrugged again. "The cryogenic chambers run independently of the rest of the ship, so Vox couldn't override it and haul me out himself- he had to wait until the computer could switch over to emergency mode."

"Stinger," EVE put in, accusingly, pointing back down the corridors in the direction of the hangar. Lenne glanced down at her, and for the first time, the dark-skinned woman looked sheepish.

"Oh. That," she admitted. "That's mine. Can't blame me for being sentimental, huh? It's not armed," she added, reassuringly. "Check it for yourself if you want."

They already had, actually, and she was telling the truth: though there had been very obvious storage areas in the vicinity of the wings for missiles, and a spot beneath the prow where some type of automatic weapon should have been mounted, there were no actual items of war on the Stinger.

Captain McCrea looked up from where he'd been staring into the face of one of the passengers, unnerved by the cold sleep of suspended animation. Something had been nagging at him for a while, and now he finally had a chance to voice it.

"Er," he hazarded, unsure of how to proceed tactfully, glancing sidelong at the redhead. Her uniform's sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and he could see what looked like plugs or rivets on the outside of her arms, a quartet of them punching through skin clear down to what had to be bone. There was the matter of her weird eyes too; the way they shone in the half-light every time she turned her head. "So what happens now?" he asked her, and then, unable to resist: "And I don't mean to be rude or anything, but why-"

Lenne followed his gaze down to her forearms and let out a short bark of laughter.

"Never seen a cyborg before, have you?" Well, there was no reason why he should: executive starliners housed people, or rather the descendants of people, that would never have even gotten close to a battlefield. Most of their ancestors would have been in good health, also. Those with artificial addenda would have been few and far between. "Mmh. I'll tell you later. Right now..." She looked back up at her audience, and favored them with a wicked smile. "Right now, the _real _party begins."

--

AN: Awuh yeah, bebeh, partay tiem. XD


	12. Chapter 10

Sorry for the wait, yo. Life, it seems, has begun catching up with me. I'll update as often as I can, but future chapters may be a bit more sporadic than usual.

That said- let's get this show on the road. (Now slightly modified, for your convenience- and also because I failed to notice a GLARING FACTUAL ERROR.

You may commence the throwing of stones.)

Wall-E is © Pixar

Lenne Vescuya and Vox are © Metro.

--

Ex Machina

Chapter 10

--

It took just under two weeks for the first of the ships to arrive, during which time the people in the depths of the _Absconditus_'s hold remained immobile and frozen in cryogenic stasis, in part due to the fact that the computer was still badly damaged and its Captain didn't know what would happen if she tried forcing a thaw command, and partly because -according to the Major- her instructions were to wait for the order to wake them up, not just go along with 'Hey! We're on Earth, everybody out of the pool'. Besides, she really had no idea how those people, most of whom were used to a lifestyle far more... comfortable... than the world as it was at present could provide, would react if she tried it.

She didn't envy the person whose job it would be to explain to them exactly what life would be like for them from now on.

There was still very little in the way of basic amenities throughout a great deal of the city at large, although the people of the _Axiom _(more specifically, the non-organic ones) had managed to cobble together an electrical network. The lights flickered now and again, and sometimes an entire section of the grid would fail and have to be repaired, but as the _Axiom _itself served as a temporary generator (what energy the ship could spare, at least), it was far more impressive an endeavor than what might have been if there had been no starliner present.

In fact, the main problem had not been electricity and warmth, but water. The reservoirs contained a sizeable amount of the liquid, but roughly ninety percent of what had been discovered was tainted in some way: either with pollution, or rust, or debris of some kind. The pipelines had fallen into such long disuse that even with purification equipment in place, actually getting liquid to come out of a tap could be a dodgy thing at best.

The dust storms were, as always, both a hassle (as the sand and grit that each storm left in its wake could clog or damage delicate equipment) and a real danger, considering the threat of suffocation to anyone caught out in one. Most of the pre-existing buildings were so old and decrepit that they didn't provide much protection from the wind, and had to be constantly maintained.

"Still," Lenne commented as she surveilled what the colonists had been doing with a critical eye, "it could be a lot worse." It could have been radioactive, was the silent conclusion to that thought, though she didn't voice it aloud. And since there weren't any imminent crises -cities rising from the sea, and the like- she opined that it was well on its way to being quite the thriving community. Which was flattering, admittedly, but there was still the matter of only one ship's worth of people being present on the face of the world.

In spite of yet another singular addition to the colony, and the revelation that many more would soon be forthcoming, life had more or less returned to something resembling normalcy in the days to come. People tried to repair the damage to city buildings and equipment, tended the spreading community garden, and WALL-E and EVE went about business as usual, compacting and stacking boxes of garbage on the city limits. It was still a sparse and not very aesthetically pleasing place, but it was much better than it had been when the _Axiom _had first arrived.

So Captain McCrea was not expecting to be startled out of bed in the wee hours of the morning one day, by a feeling of distinct _deja vu_ as AUTO popped down into his quarters to inform him that his presence was needed up on the ship's bridge.

"What is it, AUTO?" he inquired, groggily, as he stepped out into the room. It had better, he thought, have been something fairly important to warrant waking him up before the first light of dawn had yet touched the eastern horizon. The AI, who instead of waiting for the Captain's arrival, was hovering intently over the control panel, glanced over at him at once, although there was a noticeable pause before the Autopilot actually answered. Just long enough of a hesitation, in fact, to cause McCrea to become far more alert. Something was up; something distinctly out of the ordinary routine.

"**Sir**," AUTO replied, reaching out one spoke-claw to press a blinking panel to one side in lieu of explanation.

A holographic screen popped up in response to the action, solid white except for the BnL logo in the background- and the words 'Incoming Transmission' printed across the front on bold black lettering.

"Greetings, _Axiom_," a voice crackled from the transmission screen. It expanded slightly, and then hissed into temporary static before reasserting itself into the picture of a ship's interior, nearly identical to that of the _Axiom _itself. The speaker was an olive-skinned man in his late forties, his head haloed in a mass of tight black curls. Behind him (predictably) hung the black-and-white bulk of the ship's own Autopilot. "This is Captain Madrilejos of the starship _Hyperion_. Requesting clearance for landing in your vicinity."

Captain McCrea had the presence of mind to not let his mouth drop open, a reaction as a result of both realizing that there was an actual person on the other end of that transmission, and that what everyone had been waiting for was finally -_finally!_- happening. He turned to look at AUTO, who paused the relay with a claw. **"There are five other starliners currently within orbit**," he informed McCrea. "**Each is awaiting your permission to enter Earth's atmosphere**."

Captain McCrea swallowed, his eyes huge. "My permission?" he repeated, thunderstruck.

"**Affirmative**." As the current leader of Earth's populace, it was up to McCrea to act as a makeshift Ground Control. While there wasn't any danger of the ships colliding with one another, and technically they could very easily have affected reentry without permission, perhaps they thought that 'requesting clearance' would be a more polite way of making their presences known. The Autopilot did not know whether these ships were the result of the transmission the _Axiom _had put out or whether they contained more cryogenically-frozen humans; all he knew was that there was a certain protocol to be followed in this situation.

Captain McCrea cleared his throat, then reached up and tugged his hat further down on his forehead, determination creeping onto his face. "All right, AUTO," he said, the words riding on the end of a deep, steadying breath. "I'm ready. Patch me through."

"**Aye-aye, sir**."

--

Captain McCrea wasn't the only one up with the dawn. At the moment, Lenne was sitting in the middle of her ship's bridge, attempting to repair the damage that had been done to Vox's original body. It was an aggravating piece of work, since she had no instruction manual and lacked most of the proper parts for the job. At least the framework wasn't half-detached from the ceiling anymore, and she'd managed to get rid of most of the scorch marks.

Her face twisted into an expression of consternation as she examined the crack in the center of it, however. That was going to be a problem: where on Earth (pardon the pun) was she going to find a proper replacement? Unlike WALL-E's method of solving technological problems, she couldn't very well salvage parts out of another ship... there _wasn't _one; at least one that wasn't currently in use. And while the Major did have an extensive working knowledge of robotics, she hadn't a clue how to build a lens of that caliber from scratch.

Not that it would have mattered, considering the ship was well and truly totaled in the long run, but at least it gave her something to do. Vox himself was sitting slumped in the corner, cables snaking from the back of his neck and head into the far wall. Recharging, of course, although from a human perspective he appeared to be asleep- or (to a darker mind) dead, considering the android's chest didn't move.

He didn't need to breathe; why should it?

She let out a low sigh, raised her hands to rub the sleep out of her eyes- then remembered that her hands were, yet again, covered with grease, and stopped before they actually reached her face.

Great. She would have to clean them off before...

...before...

"Captain!"

"Gaaah!" There was a resounding crash as Lenne, who had evidently nodded off, sat bolt upright at the shout. She almost immediately fell over, into a tangle of wires and equipment, nearly upsetting a container of lubricant in the process. There was something digging into the small of her back; by the feel, it was a socket wrench. "_**Chyort**_-!"

She lifted her head up to glare at Vox, who to judge from his position had been on the verge of actually shaking her awake. He seemed unperturbed by the glare she was leveling in his direction, instead shifting out of his slight crouch and pointing at the bank of flickering lights at the front of the deck. Roughly half of them were still dark, but the other half functioned perfectly well. And one very ostentatious button positioned smack in the center was blinking insistently on and off, demanding that she pay attention to it.

Lenne hauled herself to her feet with a groan- and then the realization of what the flashing signal meant hit her like a sledgehammer to the face.

Two giant strides had her standing in front of the control screens, angling her head so that she could look out through the shattered windshields up at the lightening sky. One corner of the Major's mouth curved up into a crooked half-smile that did not -quite- reach her eyes.

"Showtime."

--

'Showtime' was, in fact, a fairly apt way of putting it. The entire colony, human and non, turned out _en force_ when the ships began descending, one after the other, from the sky. Three cruise ships like the _Axiom_, one carrier ship presumably containing supplies, and one that was smaller than either of the other two and which stayed in orbit the longest of all. As it happened, the cruise ships had only just arrived: the carrier ship and its smaller cousin had been in orbit for nearly three days, maintaining radio silence for some unspecified reason until Captain Madrilejos -who, as it turned out, was the pilot of the carrier- had hailed the _Axiom_.

It was a bizarre situation: waiting so long (so it felt) for even one ship to turn up, and then discovering, out of the blue, that there were five practically parked on the colony's doorstep. Most of the colonists didn't know _what _to think- should they be happy, or bewildered, or apprehensive? All three at once?

By a group consensus, it was decided that the three that had done the most for the colony (EVE, WALL-E and Captain McCrea, of course) should be the ones to greet the newcomers.

It was something of a relief, at least for the _Axiom_'s passengers, to discover that the people on each of the cruise ships looked precisely like they did- in fact, they were more like how the colonists had been before WALL-E and EVE had upset the _Axiom_'s daily routine. Most of them were confined to hover chairs, even the Captains... although the latter two, admittedly, did stand up for the purposes of traveling down to meet their established welcome committee.

Captain Madrilejos was somewhere in between the usual physical build of those exposed to micro-gravity and someone of Lenne's stature, though he leaned toward the former end of the equation. Unlike the _Absconditus_, his ship was manned by humans far more than machines, and contained mostly medical and/or scientific apparatuses.

Eventually, when all the introductions had been made, the fifth and last ship descended from the sky.

Unlike its counterparts, this ship's engines were almost silent. Its chrome exterior caught the midmorning sunlight and flung it back into the faces of its observers, forcing a great deal of them to squint or shade their eyes in order to keep watching. As previously stated, it was far more compact and understated than any of the other starcraft currently in place around the city limits; there was room inside for what could not have been more than two hundred people and assorted machines. It bore no visible title other than the numbers '01' painted on either side, and unlike the other transmissions he had presided over, Captain McCrea had not spoken to its pilot face to face: only the voice of Captain Ellison had been available to him.

It set down not far from the _Axiom_, as silent in landing as it had been in flight. For some moments there was no further action from the ray-shaped vessel, until -as the breathless waiting continued to drag on- there was a slight hiss from its base and the bottom opened up, allowing a ramp to descend from the aperture to the ground.

Down the ramp came a quartet of people, clearly of the same type stored in the hold of the _Absconditus _from their slight physiques and the fact that, rather than the simple red or blue attire worn by nearly every other human present, they instead wore loose-fitting, dark-toned clothing.

They peeled off to either side of the ship, standing in pairs, in almost militant poses of attention. None fo the four said anything, even when Captain McCrea stepped forward to offer his greetings with WALL-E and EVE. Which would have given him pause, if the silence had lasted long enough... but apparently the odd quartet were only waiting for the next passengers to make an appearance, moments later. The first was clearly the Captain of the ship: a watery-eyed man of indeterminate age, with short, spiky hair the color of straw. Those that followed after him, flanking the Captain on either side, appeared to be technicians of some sort, all of them much more relaxed and unassuming than the guards to either side of the ship.

The Captain paused a few feet in front of the delegated welcoming trio, rocked back on his heels, and took a breath, probably with the intention of saying something reassuring. He never got the chance.

Instead, there was a slight commotion from inside the ship, and a mold jostling of bodies that suggested another passenger making his way forward, elbowing aside colleagues as he went.

"Come on, come on," a distinctly masculine-sounding voice commented from within the small crowd of newly-awakened immigrants, "move over. Where's the Captain? I want to meet this guy. I want to shake his hand." He slurred his words together slightly, in a manner that suggested some type of regional dialect... though such cadences had more or less faded from humankind after years of all living on the same ship. The last few passengers on the ramp glanced back at the sound of the voice, then hastily stepped back -almost falling off said ramp in the process- to make room for the newcomer.

'There, now. That's more like it," the speaker remarked to no one in particular, brushing back his hair with one hand as he made the last few steps from starship to the ground. There was a moment of silence as the stranger blinked, owlishly, in the sudden light of the Earth morning, and then his mouth parted in a wide and friendly grin. He extended a hand toward Captain McCrea, who did not move or speak in response, apparently stunned. Indeed, the entire crowd had gone silent- those that were close enough to the last ship to actually see the passengers, at least.

"Good to meet you, Captain McCrea," the smiling, uncannily familiar man said, his smile never faltering even during speech. He grasped McCrea's limp hand and shook it vigorously, oblivious to the fact that the man he was addressing could probably have been knocked over with a feather at that moment.

"I'm Shelby Forthright."

--

AN: 'Chyort'- Russian swear word. No, I'm not translating what it means. X3

Anyway... Oh snap. XD

(Also, if you caught the obscure reference to a certain... author... in this chapter, I will love you until the end of time.)


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